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Shavuot Holocaust Literature: the Language of Memory
10 books to read this Summer Survivor Spotlight: Remembering Roman Kent Holocaust Tourism: What is it & Is it a good thing? F E A T U R E D
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Table of Contents Letter from the Editor pg. 2 Shavuot, the Holocaust & Us pg. 4 Holocaust Literature: the Language of Memory. pg. 9 10 Books to Read This Summer pg. 20 Survivor Spotlight: Roman Kent pg. 28 Holocaust Tourism: what is it and is it a good thing? pg. 32 Featured Story: Israel pg. 40 Un-Learning to Learn: American Imperialism and Yellow Journalism pg. 60 Looking Forward to Fall pg. 66 pg. 1
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Letter from the Editor Happy Summer Everyone! As some of you may know, one of Zachor Shoah's signature projects are Holocaust Memorial Butterfly Gardens focusing on the 1.5 million children murdered and the Righteous Among the Nations that followed their moral compass and did what they could to help those in need. Gardens take time to plan, plant, and cultivate. I see everyone involved with Holocaust education as a flower in this big Holocaust Garden. We all need time to grow into ourselves and bring back the butterflies. But we can easily forget the most important part of gardening - cultivating it. There is a coffee shop in Atlanta called Cultivate, they have a great sign. It states: Cultivate Kindness- Cultivate Community. Nothing could be more perfect a motto for what we do or for the times we are living in. As you enjoy your Summer, remember to cultivate yourself - to grow in knowledge, grow in spirit, and grow in community. When I was still in the classroom, I saved all my professional development intentions for the summer. It was a time for me to focus on my own learning and growth. As I was putting this issue together on that premise, many things took place - and all of them seemed to fall along the lines of rising antisemitism and anti-Zionism. So an issue that had not started out with the intention to be directly connected to current events, became that anyway. Either way, the articles herein will help you grow this summer. pg. 2
We have many new projects we are working on to help elevate teacher trainings, teacher and student experiences, and so much more! But we need your help to see them come to fruition.Click on the QR code for opportunities this summer to grow in knowledge.
The inconvenient truths about the Holocaust, Antisemitism, and the rise of Nazism July 10-31 2021
Eugenics: How Politics and PseudoScience made monsters out of men August 15 2021 For up to date information on all our workshops and conferences become a member- www.zachorshoah.org
To make a tax deductible contribution or donation please send checks to: The Harold E Simon Family Foundation c/o Zachor Shoah 8925 SW 148 Street suite #218 Miami FL 33176 *memo line with Zachor Shoah specific program you wish to support : (Training & Events - Publications - Gardens) or leave blank for general support.
Carolina Simon pg. 3
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WISHING YOU A
Chag Shavuot Sameach pg. 4
According to MyJewishLearning.com, Shavuot is the Feast of Weeks celebrated 7 weeks after Pesach (Passover) and takes place exactly 50 days after the first seder. It is a two fold holiday in that it celebrates both an ancient agricultural society and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The Christian world refers to Shavuot as Pentecost, and of course, has different religious understandings of the holiday. On Shavuot we read the book of Ruth. That makes sense as it is in this book that we hear about the practice of gleaning. So there is the agricultural connection.And everyone is expected to go to synagogue and hear the reading of the Ten Commandments, also makes sense as it is the holiday commemorating the Torah. But there is more to it than that. Here is a quick video by Chabad.org to explain it better: Shavuot explained So, how does this holiday connect us to the Holocaust? Unlike Pesach or Purim or Hanukah that commemorate the Jewish people escaping annihilation by some tyrannical group, Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah and with it the commandments by which to live a Righteous life. So many of the commandments were broken during the Holocaust. The obvious Thou Shall Not Kill comes to mind immediately, but what about Thou Shall Not Covet or Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness and of course Thou Shall Have No Other God Before Me...all these were broken by the Nazis and their collaborators. As educators, when we seek to help the younger generations create a world free of genocide and hate, perhaps we should focus less on the politics of the day and more on the spiritual void created by a technology filled modern life and cults of personality with extreme loyalty to the leader or its ideology and not to God. pg. 5
I Scream, you scream, we all scream for ... Cheesecake Of all the cheesy things to eat on Shavuot, cheescake is my favorite. Publix has a decent premade one if you don't like to cook. But if you feel adventours here is Martha Stewart's recipe. I have included an instructional video too.
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prep: 20 mins total: 2 hrs Servings: 12 Ingredients For Crust 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus room-temperature butter for pan 12 graham crackers (3-by-5 inch) 1/4 cup sugar 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt For Filling 2 1/2 pounds bar cream cheese, room temperature 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest, plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt 4 large eggs 1 cup sour cream Directions Instructions Step 1Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make crust: Butter a 9-by-3-inch springform pan. In a food processor, pulse graham crackers until fine crumbs form; add melted butter, sugar, and salt, and pulse to combine. Press crumb mixture into bottom and about 1 inch up side of pan. Bake until set, 12 to 15 minutes; let cool on a wire rack. Reduce oven to 325 degrees. Step 2 Set a kettle of water to boil. Make filling: Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese on medium until fluffy, scraping down side of bowl. Gradually add sugar, beating until fluffy. Beat in lemon zest and juice, and salt. Beat in eggs, one at a time, scraping down side of bowl after each addition. Beat in sour cream. Step 3 Wrap bottom half of pan in foil. Pour in filling; place in a roasting pan. Pour in boiling water to come halfway up side of springform. Bake until just set in center, about 1 3/4 hours. Remove pan from water; let cool 20 minutes. Run a paring knife around edge; let cool completely. Cover; chill overnight before serving. Instructional Video
Last Month Combat Antisemitism shared our work with their followers. Thank you! If you do not know about this grassroots organization you need to. Go to www.combatantisemitism.org and sign the pledge, become informed, get involved.
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Holocaust Literature: the language of memory
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Holocaust Literature: the Language of Memory Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine I will look at what exactly writer, claimed that nothing is original. Holocaust literature is, what He believed that everyone influences unique challenges it faces as a everyone else and therefore literature as genre, how it is evolving, and how well. His theory is easily seen in various best to read it. literary works from captivity narratives to Ernst van Alphen explains the slave narratives to other testimonial uniqueness of Holocaust literature literature. The reader can see the in the break between witnessing similarities between narratives while still and understanding, “Since the Enlightenment the appreciating their differences. Holocaust observation of the visual world has literature can be easily adapted to fit this had a privileged status: it is a theory, but it is also an artistic expression precondition and guarantee of as unique as the event that prompted it. knowledge and understanding. The Holocaust was an event so unique Being an eyewitness of something that it separated from other historic implies more or less automatic atrocities due to the degree of human apprehension and comprehension cruelty and the motivations for that of the observed situation or event. The link between seeing and cruelty. Unlike the racist economic comprehension, however, has been system of slavery or a power hungry radically disrupted in the tribal massacre, the Holocaust was not experiences of Holocaust victims”. – driven by a desire for cheap labor or Ernst van Alphen, Image and more land. Any gains made by the Nazis Remembrance were a side effect of the original motivation of death to all Jews simply Most of the authors that make because they were Jewish. It is because up the canon of Holocaust of the uniqueness of the Holocaust that literature were witnesses to the the literature that was born from its event. Simon Wiesenthal, Andre ashes is unique too. Throughout this Schwartz-Bart, Jurek Becker, Primo essay, I will argue the case for Holocaust Levi, and Elie Wiesel all wrote literature. pg. 10
Repair the World: the Israel Edition about the Holocaust from the perspective of witness, victim, and survivor. They all saw the Holocaust, but as Ernst van Alphen states, they could not comprehend what took place before their eyes. And even after 76 years of information, education, and personal artistic expression on the event, we too have great difficulty comprehending it. Many questions are still not adequately answered. What constitutes Holocaust literature? What defines a novel or narrative as part of the canon? Does language play a special role in this literary form? Are the motivations of the author different from other forms of testimonial narrative? It would seem that the motivation for writing about the Holocaust can be found within the pages of the book, Echoes From the Death Camps,
"Should our murderers be victorious, should they write the history of this war…their every word will be taken for gospel. Or they may wipe out our memory altogether, as if we had never existed, as if there had never been a Polish Jewry, a Ghetto in Warsaw, a Maidanek. Not even a dog will howl for us. But if we write the history of this period…we’ll have the thankless job of proving to a reluctant world that we were Abel, the murdered brother.” (Rosenberg p.335)
Perhaps this is what differentiates Holocaust literature from other forms of literature; the author is not using creativity to tell a story, to express emotions, or to make dreams a reality. It is a means of giving testimony through the use of prose. It is a literature created with the intention of giving voice to the dead so that even if only one person had survived to tell the story, the names of every victim would be known, and remembered, even if only as a member of the Jewish people. Unlike other testimonial literatures (captivity or slave narratives) the stories are not told with a political slant, including exaggeration of events, pg. 11
Repair the World: the Israel Edition for the purpose of changing or complying with political trends. To the contrary, until recently all Holocaust literature was written by a survivor, and at times by those that did not survive as is the case of Anne Frank and Miklos Radnoti, without exaggeration of any events. To the contrary, the reality was so unimaginable that the telling of the Holocaust experience is often not as torturous as the reality. Elie Wiesel’s Night is a good example of how the language used to describe the events is often powerful yet sparingly used. “In three days I shall no longer be here…say the Kaddish for me. We promised him. In three days’ time, when we saw the smoke rising from the chimney, we would think of him. Ten of us would gather together and hold a special service. All his friends would say the Kaddish. Then he went off toward the hospital, his step steadier, not looking back. An ambulance was waiting to take him to Birkenau. These were terrible days. We received more blows than food; we were crushed with work. And three days after he had gone we forgot to say Kaddish”. (Wiesel 73).
Elie Wiesel has said so much in such a short paragraph. We know that death was waiting for them and they knew it too. We know that hunger and survival consumed their every thought, and we know that although forgotten at the time, the guilt that rose from survival lives on. We know this because of the carefully chosen words Wiesel uses to express this idea. It is not an idea repeated over many pages. It is simply stated once. This is true for most of the statements made in the novel. Only the word night appears over and over again. To the reader who is new to the world of Holocaust literature this may seem odd, even unemotional and unattached. But post-Holocaust language is unable to express what happened, what people saw, and especially what they felt. Berel Lang claims in Rosenberg’s Echoes from the Holocaust that this distortion of language is a direct result of the manipulation of language by the Nazis. “Thus, too, the assertion made here of a connection between language and Nazi genocide may seem hardly to move beyond the claim that language was at once a
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition victim of the genocide and an agent causing it” (Rosenberg 341). Nazis chose to give new meanings to mundane words and phrases. Their efforts resulted in a new code language allowing them to continue their mission of killing Jews while Germans, and many others, continued with their lives unaware of what was happening outside city limits. Words like Sonderbehandlund - special treatment execution, Aussiedlungevacuation, Umsiedlungressetlement, Auflockerungthinning out, Ausschaltung – removal and Sauberung – cleansing were all used instead of the words for killing or execution. These terms were used with the Jewish population in order to prevent resistance, but also with the general population and amongst Nazis as well (Rosenberg p 351). In addition to the chosen vocabulary changes, other words, too, were altered in meaning. Words like boxcar, numbers, barracks, ration, showers, selection, roll call, tattoo,
and chimney all were given new meanings due to their usage during the Holocaust. Even the word prisoner or inmate was distorted. This use and abuse of language by Nazis has made a victim of all who use the words. It makes victims of us because we are left with no other words but those chosen by the perpetrators to tell the story of the victims. As the Holocaust is taught to more people, its mutilated language, the language of a nightmare lacking in its ability to properly express itself yet understood by those who hear it, is passed on as a torch of knowledge to a new generation. I believe there is a danger that still haunts the language of the Holocaust. If such simple and ordinary words were transformed into the mechanism that allowed evil to exist, the dual definition must be taught explicitly. The problems of language and the Holocaust are not confined to the complexities of word choice when telling the story of the Holocaust. The post-Holocaust world is one that is permeated by the events of the Holocaust.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition The re-defining of language has affected not only the literature, but every day speech as well. Here, too, the Holocaust is unique from its testimonial narrative predecessors. Words like Holocaust, Nazi, Hitler for example, have become such common terms that they are often misused or abused. In recent years we have seen such terms used to describe everything from immigration policy disputes along the US-Mexico border to conservative voters or President Obama or President Trump. Even after the Holocaust, in a world seemingly so different from the one that created it, language continues to be inadequate in its ability to speak of the unspeakable and inadequately used to compare one political idea or movement to another. Individual words themselves have become commonplace within everyday speech.
Language has evolved in the postHolocaust world as a tool with which to manipulate the political and social senses, “a view that at the level of political reality was not long ago a radical innovation now becomes naturalized and familiar… (Rosenberg 358). This is true even for those who do not intend to manipulate. The writer of Holocaust literature, for example, has no intention of manipulating the reader, yet has no other choice since the only words available to the writer are those created by the Nazis. Words of deceit, manipulation, and what Berel Lang calls the figurative lie. To witness an event is to share in its essence with those who actually experienced it. This is the core purpose behind Holocaust writers’ motivations for sharing their stories. In writing about the event, they give testimony; they bear witness to the Holocaust, thus sharing the experience of all victims with their readers and turning their readers into witnesses.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition Creating a fictitious testimony, that is to say a fictional piece of literature based on historical events can provide much needed longevity and expansion of audiences to the genre, but it can pose serious threats to the validity of all Holocaust testimony. Unlike previous testimonial narratives, Holocaust literature and history scholars often want to create universality to the suffering, perhaps as an attempt to prevent another genocide; perhaps as an attempt to make a “Jewish” story relevant or interesting to non-Jews. Two authors come to mind as examples of this: William Styron (Sophie’s Choice) and John Boyne (the Boy in the Striped Pajamas). Both authors tell the story of the Holocaust and the “horrors” of surviving Auschwitz but they do so by focusing the reader’s sympathy onto a non-Jewish victim.Sophie is described as a member of the Polish inteligencia who upon arriving at Auschwitz must choose which child will live or die. She chooses to save her son. In reality this would not have happened.
All prisoners upon arrival at Auschwtiz, a death camp created solely for the purpose of quickly and efficiently killing as many people as possible, sent all young mothers with small children to the gas chambers upon arrival. They did this because children were useless to them (except the few saved for medical experiments or for pedophilia brothels) and because mothers whose children were taken away became useless themselves as they did nothing but cry for their babies. In addition, Polish prisoners were made Kapos- those in charge of a barrack.The Nazis relied on the existing Antisemitism among the Polish people to help them further dehumanize and police the Jews. One has to ask why did Styron choose to change the reality? Did he want to avoid the underlying root cause of the Holocaust – Antisemitism?A similar situation is true of Boyne’s work. The story is about a Jewish boy about 9 years old and the son of the commandant of the same age. They become friends as the German boy and Jewish boy travel in and out of
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition of Auschwitz through a hole in the fence and culminates in the German boy being rounded up with his Jewish friend and gassed to death. Again none of this is remotely possible. Fences around Auschwitz were fortified with a second fence, both electric. It is true that the commandant of Auschwitz, like several other camps, had families that lived there with them, but their children had been taught well who Jews were, why they were in Auschwitz, and why it was a crime to be friends with them. We again ask why would the author change the reality? Why did he feel the need to have an “innocent” victim die? Why was the death of a 9 year old Jewish boy not enough? The Holocaust is full of extreme experiences. The dangers associated with this type of Holocaust novel are only intensified by their popularity as films.
The reality is the Styron and Boyne will influence few people who read Wiesel, but a much larger number of people watch movies than read these days. Styron has said that he has read some Holocaust literature, but that since they share certain details it is unnecessary to read too much on the subject (Lewis 175). Styron’s opinion of the Holocaust as “detail” is evident in his work as Sophie’s Choice is not about the Holocaust but rather about Sophie’s life as a result of her choice. Sophie could just as easily have been asked to make that choice as a Chinese woman during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, or as an Irish woman during the Irish potato famine, or as a slave woman in Antebellum America. Styron attempted to make the Holocaust more than an atrocity against European Jews, but it was the Final Solution – the irrational and fervent desire to eradicate Jews from all of Europe that made the Holocaust unique.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition As stated earlier, it was the motivations of the Nazis not their actions that made the Holocaust unique. In their quest to make the Holocaust a universal suffering Styron and Boyne robbed their audiences of being literary witnesses to the event, separating them even further from the victims, the survivors, and its memory. In contrast, John Biguenet, author of a collection of short stories titled The Torturer’s Apprentice, wrote a short story that was later made into a play as part of that collection titled I Am Not A Jew. In the story, the non-Jewish American characters bear witness to the experiences of life after the Holocaust. The main characters are a middle-aged couple who go to Germany on vacation. They notice how hospitable everyone is around town, how quaint the town is as if stepping out of a history book or fairy tale and how proudly German they are without being hostile or rude about it. The wife naps while the husband takes a stroll around town. pg. 17
He ends up in an abandoned cemetery on the outskirts of town. He soon realizes it’s a Jewish cemetery. As he admires the headstones with dates and names and small photos inscribed on the marble slabs a group of Neo-Nazi youth attacks him. The whole time he shouts in broken German “Ich Nicht bin Juden – I am not a Jew”. He escapes, and after composing himself, returns to the hotel and tells his wife. It is her response that gives testimony that transforms the story into one of the Holocaust, and the reader into witness. She simply says to her husband, Wir sind alle Juden, We are all Jews. After Hitler, what choice do we have? We have to be Jews, all of us. In the cemetery they split the world into Jews and Nazis…and you chose not to be a Jew. (Biguenet 5051). The wife expresses the postHolocaust concept that one must join the victims, that is to say only those that see no difference between a Jew and a non-Jew are the ones that will create a new world – a better healed world; A world where a Holocaust could not occur.
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And a world where the victims of the Holocaust are remembered through the testimony of the new witnessthe reader through their thoughts, words, and choices. 76 years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz, and people are still questioning the fields of Holocaust scholarship and literature. Holocaust deniers, as they are called, do not only question the reality of the Holocaust as a factual event, but also the validity of studying or reading works from this field as they question the authenticity of the information presented. One of their greatest weapons are such books and films as Sophie’s choice and the Boy in the Striped Pajamas, claiming the break with other novels as a sign that all novels or stories are fictional. A similar argument is made with films such as It’s a Beautiful Life. Holocaust literature has a great responsibility to present factual information through the use of prose.
This is particularly of concern as survivors die and new voices emerge, whether they are the children of survivors or not, the telling of the many stories of the Holocaust can help us all become witnesses of an event that although highly secretive and manipulative of language, emotions, and events affected the entire world. All our humanity has been affected. But our humanity cannot be restored through more distortion, further manipulation, or denial. Holocaust literature therefore is the language of our collective memory in a post-Holocaust world where everyone is either a Nazi or a Jew. Bibliography: Biguenet, John. The Torturer’s Apprentice. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001. Foley, Barbara. Fact, Fiction, Facism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives. Comparative Literature 35 (1982): 330360 Hornstein, Shelly., Jacobowitz, Florence eds. Image and Remembrance: Representation and the Holocaust. Bloomoington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Langer, Lawrence L. Preempting the Holocaust. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998 Rosenberg, Alan., Myers,Gerald E. Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Rosenfeld, Alvin. A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Young, James E. Interpreting Literary Testimony: A Pre-face to Rereading Holocaust Diaries and Memoirs. New Literary History. 18 (1987): 403-423.
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10 Books to Read This Summer
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As I prepare to give you a list of summer must-reads I find myself asking what is it I think you need to gain from the experience. Immediately, I think of knowledge. There is so much more to the Holocaust than what most teacher's are exposed to. My teacher trainings are attempting to correct that, but short of seeking a graduate degree, many teachers will still be left with questions. Then I think but what about the literature? These are rich stories that deserve an audience. And then I recognize that anyone of these books is surely to be a depressing read, but that is the nature of the subject. So I have decided to give you a list of both historical textbooks/scholarly writing and literature. I will be starting a "book club" in the Fall to discuss many of these titles. I hope you will join us. Happy Reading! pg. 21
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5 must read Scholarly texts to read this summer: Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder According to MyJewishLearning.com, "Yale historian Snyder’s 2010 book explores the messy intersection between Hitler’s Final Solution and Stalin’s vicious ideology that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 14 million people throughout Europe’s “bloodlands”: Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and the Baltics. Snyder’s hypothesis is profound, but simple: The Nazis weren’t just the “villains,” and the Soviets weren’t just the “heroes.” Rather, neither regime could have murdered as many as it did without the aiding and abetting of the other. An important history lesson often overlooked". We completely agree. This is one of those areas that when studied, help expand our understanding not only of the Holocaust, but of Fascism and Communism as well. Concepts that are more pertinent to our modern lives than we often realize. Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl At times considered controversial, Frankl's book is a must read when attempting to better understand the nature of survival. A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was able to observe the way he and others in Auschwitz coped (or didn’t) with the experience. He came to believe that humans’ deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding book (which has sold 16 million copies) transcends its time and place; it’s an exploration of what it truly means to live. pg. 22
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What We Knew by Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband A must read when wanting to truly understand first-hand accounts of what life was like in the early years of Nazism for both Jews and nonJews. "Although many people believed after WWII that ordinary citizens couldn't have known about the Holocaust during the war, the fact remains that the discrimination, persecution and murder of millions of people didn't just happen. Eric Johnson's book analyzes what everyday life was like in Germany during the rise of the Third Reich, how people coped, survived, and justified what was happening, and just how much people really knew about the Nazi's evil" - Hachett Book Group How Could This Happen by Dan McMillan In the study of the Holocaust, we often loose sight of the forest for the trees. Historian Dan McMillan takes a wide approach to understand the Holocaust by examining the various systems of power in place, the causes and effects, and the factors both manufactured and coincidental that went into shaping the Holocaust. This is a book that helps people understand history on a macro level, allowing them to see many connections between events and places.
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The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing & the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton Possibly one of the most important books every compiled on the Holocaust yet rarely assigned. This book dives deep into the dangers of politicized medicine and the God-complex associated with it. If you want to understand what drove the Nazi Medical Paradigm and how to recognize the dangers, you must read this book! Actually you must read this book ... full stop! 5 Holocaust Literature books to read this summer: Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature by David Patterson (Editor), Alan L. Berger (Editor), Sarita Cargas (Editor) The expert authors of Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature undertake profiling 128 of the most influential first generation authors who either survived, perished, or were closely connected to the Holocaust. Arranged alphabetically by author, all of the entries answer the same basic questions about the author and his or her work: What is the nature of the author's literary response to the Holocaust? What is his or her place in Holocaust literature? What does the author's work contribute to an understanding of the Holocaust? What is distinctive about the author's work? What are some key moments in the author's life? What issues does the author's work pose for the reader? The Encyclopedia is intended for all students and teachers of the Holocaust, regardless of their levels of learning.
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My Dog Lala by Roman Kent A short 45 page book about a young boy and his dog. Sweet and heartbreaking at the same time. This is a must read to fully understand the lack of humanity of the Nazis juxtaposed to the sheer goodness of dogs. The Last of the Just by Andre Schwartz Bart This novel reminds me of Borges as it it combines philosophy, spirituality, history and prose into one genius telling of the LamedVov, the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition, a blessing which extended to one Levy of each succeeding generation. The novel tells the story from the Spanish Inquisition, to expulsions from England, France, Portugal, Germany, and Russia, and to the small Polish village of Zemyock, where the Levys settle for two centuries in relative peace. It is in the twentieth century that Ernie Levy emerges, The Last of the Just, the last of the Lamed-Vov in 1920s Germany, as Hitler’s sinister star is on the rise and the agonies of Auschwitz loom on the horizon.If Levy is one more victim to the Nazis it is far more significant to the world to have lost the last of the Just. Like Night by Elie Wiesel, this is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.
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This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski Tadeusz Borowski’s concentration camp stories were based on his own experiences surviving Auschwitz and Dachau. In spare, brutal prose he describes a world where where the will to survive overrides compassion and prisoners eat, work and sleep a few yards from where others are murdered; where the difference between human beings is reduced to a second bowl of soup, an extra blanket or the luxury of a pair of shoes with thick soles; and where the line between normality and abnormality vanishes. Published in Poland after the Second World War, these stories constitute a masterwork of world literature. The German Girl by Armando Lucas Correa One of the few Holocaust novels to tell the story of The St. Louis and Jews in Cuba, Weaving dual time frames, and based on a true story, The German Girl is a beautifully written and deeply poignant story about generations of exiles seeking a place to call home. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink Do our morals and values have acceptable limits? Are we allowed to be blind to injustice if we feel inferior or inadequate? What if we too are seeking "survival" are we justified in ignoring true life and death situations? What makes us human and what makes us savage? These are the questions the main characters grapple with. Romantic and horrifying at the same time, this novel makes the reader question themselves unlike others. pg. 26
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Remembering Roman Kent of blessed memory
As stated on the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous website: Roman Kent was born in Lodz, Poland in 1925. He spent the war years in the Lodz ghetto and in the Auschwitz, Mertzbachtal, Dornau, and Flossenburg concentration camps. In 1946, he came to the United States with his brother. Once in America, he made a life for himself. He championed the needs of Holocaust survivors and of Righteous Gentiles. pg. 28
Roman was appointed by President Obama to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, he became president of The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, Treasurer of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Chairman of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, and President of the International Auschwitz Committee.
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But there is so much more to him and his story than that and I know the JFR agrees. When you look at pictures of Roman Kent, you can see in his face you can see his soul. It was a good , sweet, filled-with hope and love soul. How does someone who as a young adolescent lives through unspeakable evil, looses his parents, and barely survives end up with such a pure soul? How does someone robbed of an education become so important? I can not begin to give his story justice. I will share with you his story in his own words. I can only pay tribute to him, his work, and how he influenced my life. The world is definitely a sadder place without Roman in it.
I met Roman when I was in NY at Columbia University as part of the Alfred Lerner Fellowship an educational component of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, the organization Roman helped establish. In many ways the JFR personifies Roman's good soul. Its an organization devoted to assisting financially the Righteous Gentiles that helped save Jews during the Holocaust. And it has an educational arm that recognizes outstanding educators and helps them continue their work as scholars via seminars and study trips. I have attached a video from the JFR website of Roman Kent"s life. If you were not familiar with their work, please get to know them. They are extraordinary.
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Remembering Roman Kent
A Survivor's Journey- The Life of Roman Kent https://vimeo.com/149652820
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The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous provides financial support to aged and needy non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and preserves their legacy through a national education program. Read more at: https://jfr.org/ Copyright © Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
Here I am with the world's most devoted executive vice president ever! JFR staff is available to assist educators with information and resources on teaching the Holocaust in their classroom. Please contact Stanlee Stahl at 1.973.736.1800 or e-mail her at sstahl@jfr.org.
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Holocaust Tourism: what is it & is it a good thing?
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition Tourism is the commercial organization and operation of vacations and visits to places of interest. We have all engaged in the practice at one point or another. Some of us may have been able to afford luxury into the mix but all of us have gone somewhere, even if only to the local park with a plaque commemorating a long ago event. Vacations that involve local or national offices of tourism usually leave lasting impressions with significant information about the place, the event, and the people. Sometimes, places involve ancient scenes of tragedies like the Pompeii ruins or the battlefields across America commemorating the Civil War. Is Holocaust Tourism any different from visiting Pompeii or even a Civil War plantation?
The answer is as complicated as the event itself. All forms of tourism keep places from the past relevant to our present and necessary for our future. Monuments, and the visiting of them, helps us remember our past and hopefully learn from it. So in this regard Holocaust tourism, like that of Civil War era locations and those of antiquity alike, are essential to keep as destination sites for people on vacation. But what happens when people on vacation can't leave their "funself" outside the sphere of the tragic historic site? Herein lies the problem. I have lived in the South of the United States my entire life, and thus visited a few plantations. The Laura Plantation has been the most memorable to date. It is the site of the Brer Rabbit story being written down for the first time culturally taking it from an oral tale told by Senegalese people (both in Senegal and slaves in America) to their children for generations to a popular tale known by most children regardless of race. pg. 33
It is also the only remaining Creole plantation and the former childhood home of Chubby Checker. Regardless, I have never been on a plantation tour that had anyone on the tour smoking, eating, or laughing. I can not say the same of Holocaust memorial sites.
For all the perceived racial tensions and inequalities, the truth is that both white and black Americans recognize the solemnity of the space, that Plantations while architecturally beautiful, provided a facade for the underbelly of an evil beast called slavery. That most of the people that lived on the grounds of a Plantation suffered daily. That such a space is kept as a reminder to us that all that glitters is not gold and that greed and selfishness blind us to our shared humanity.
Sadly, I have been to many Holocaust sites from Westerbork to Auschwitz where this is not the case at all. In 2016 I visited the United States Holocaust Museum. In spite of their attempts to keep the permanent exhibit a solemn space by limiting the number of people who enter at a time,
people in larger family groups engage in loud conversations, often having nothing to do with the exhibit. n 2017 I visited Terezin, this was my first time visiting any camps in person. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I could feel the little souls of so many children there. But I was more overwhelmed by the nonchalant attitude of locals and other tourists. Again loud chatter, joking, laughing, even ice cream and pizza parlors were open on the site! I was told it is partially a functioning town. What? People live there?
Repair the World: the Israel Edition Can you imagine people living as their primary home, in the Laura Plantation? In 2018 I visited Bergen Belsen, Westerbork, and Buchenwald among other places. In Buchenwald, 5 buses of high school students were there while I was there. The children talked and laughed during the introductory film, smoked their cigarettes afterwards and threw them on the ground after having been reminded that a concentration camp- including that one- was a large cemetery. I doubt they would do that when visiting their grandparents' graves. At Westerbork children kept rearranging the rocks on the symbolic traintracks.
pg. 35
When the leader of my group said something about how it was disrespectful and disturbing to us, as Jews, to see that, the tour guide stated that its cultural for them in the Netherlands to let children be children. Perhaps then they should not go to such places- its not a playground after all. In 2019 I visited AuschwitzBirkenau.Again people eating, smoking, throughout portions of the tour. Who can eat during a tour like that? And of course the selfie taking opportunities abound. And then the graffiti left behind on the walls of the barracks by previous tour goers "Katy was here" type messaging everywhere. 2/3 of young people under the age of 30 do not know the word Auschwitz, they barely know who Hitler was, and have no knowledge of the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. But Holocaust tourism is doing just fine. How is this possible? Whose responsibility is it to correct this? On the one hand as Jews, these are our cemeteries our ancestors ashes are scattered here, their suffering still permeates the air.
pg. 36
On the other hand these sites belong to the every governments that perpetrated these atrocities in the first place. How can we seriously expect Poland to honor our dead as we would, when they won't even acknowledge their own collaboration? Having Jews or even Holocaust scholars on the boards of these places, the majority of the board members should be Jews, religious ones too. While American Jews have done well in financially supporting charitable organizations that promote the teaching of the Holocaust and organizations such as JNF, we must do more. We must ensure that the 2/3 of people who have grown up in a world with Holocaust education mandated and normalized in most spaces and states actually know about the Holocaust and understand how to recognize fascism and antisemitism. Otherwise what is the point? We must be sure that the organizations we are funding are teaching the Holocaust in a way that 100% promotes the memory of Jews, Judaism, and combats Antisemitism. That Israel is understood as the historic and rightful homeland of the Jewish people and that our memorial sites are respected as the solemn spaces they are.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Featured Story: Israel pg. 40
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
History Architecture Flora & Fauna Food Tourism: Israel for Christians Birthright Politics & Conflict
pg. 41
A country as old as Israel has a very long and complex history. A history too long to fully explain in one article. However, the basics are laid out here for you to better understand the region, its people, and its future. Biblical history is 100% modern Israeli history. It is the root of the current country. Ignoring it or dismissing it as lore not only does not coincide with archeological discoveries but also denies Jews their full history. According to the Israeli government, "The birthplace of the Jewish people is the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). There, a significant part of the nation's long history was enacted, of which the first thousand years are recorded in the Bible; there, its cultural, religious, and national identity was formed; and there, its physical presence has been maintained through the centuries, even after the majority was forced into exile. During the many years of dispersion, the Jewish people never severed nor forgot its bond with the Land. With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jewish independence, lost 2,000 years earlier, was renewed
"Roughly 1300 years before the birth of Jesus, Moses lived and died. In Deuteronomy 34:8 we read that the Jews mourned for thirty days following Moses' death in the Plains of Moab. This area borders Israel, just east of the Jordan River.And that Moses was 120 years old at the time of his death. For a long time, in modern history, this claim has been scoffed at along with many others from Exodus including the parting of the Red Sea. But recent discoveries have shown ancient chariot wheels at the bottom of the Red sea significantly far from shore and that human beings can live to be over 120 years old, although not that common anymore. The book of Joshua begins with G‑d's command to bring the Jewish people across the Jordan River, a land inhabited by the Moabs. The Jews were never handed over the keys to the kingdom, they did have to fight for it, but that is not unlike the story of United Kingdom, Spain, Poland, or the United States. The idea that your ancestors fought to acquire an area of land is a common part of human history. This action does not invalidate ownership of the region. pg. 42
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Timeline of Historical Highlights Before the Common Era 17th-6th C. BCE BIBLICAL TIMES Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - patriarchs of the Jewish people and bearers of a belief in one God - settle in the Land of Israel. Famine forces Israelites to migrate to Egypt. c.13th century Exodus from Egypt: Moses leads Israelites from Egypt, followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert. Torah, including the Ten Commandments, received at Mount Sinai. 13th-12th centuries Israelites settle in the Land of Israel c.1020 Jewish monarchy established; Saul, first king. c.1000 Jerusalem made capital of David's kingdom. c.960 First Temple, the national and spiritual center of the Jewish people, built in Jerusalem by King Solomon. c. 930 Divided kingdom: Judah and Israel 722-720 Israel crushed by Assyrians; 10 tribes exiled (Ten Lost Tribes). 586 Judah conquered by Babylonia; Jerusalem and First Temple destroyed; most Jews exiled. pg. 43
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
THE SECOND TEMPLE PERIOD 538-142 Persian and Hellenistic periods (Purim story) 538-515 Many Jews return from Babylonia; Temple rebuilt. 332 Land conquered by Alexander the Great; Hellenistic rule. 166-160 Maccabean (Hasmonean) revolt against restrictions on practice of Judaism and desecration of the Temple (Hannukah story) 142-129 Jewish autonomy under Hasmoneans. 129-63 Jewish independence under Hasmonean monarchy. 63 Jerusalem captured by Roman general, Pompey. 63 BCE-313 CE Roman rule 63-4 BCE Herod, Roman vassal king, rules the Land of Israel; Temple in Jerusalem refurbished
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
(CE - The Common Era) c. 20-33 Ministry of Jesus of Nazareth 66 Jewish revolt against the Romans 70 Destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple. (creation of the first Diaspora) 73 Last stand of Jews at Masada. 132-135 Bar Kokhba uprising against Rome. c. 210 Codification of Jewish oral law (Mishna) completed. FOREIGN DOMINATION 313-636 Byzantine rule c. 390 Commentary on the Mishna (Jerusalem Talmud) completed. 614 Persian invasion 636-1099 Arab rule 691 On site of First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, Dome of the Rock built by Caliph Abd el-Malik.
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1099-1291 Crusader domination (Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem) 1291-1516 Mamluk rule 1517-1917 Ottoman rule 1564 Code of Jewish law (Shulhan Arukh) published. 1860 First neighborhood built outside walls of Jerusalem's Old City. 1882-1903 First Aliya (large-scale immigration), mainly from Russia. 1897 First Zionist Congress convened by Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland; Zionist Organization founded. (A response to the Dreyfus Affair) 1904-14 Second Aliya, mainly from Russia and Poland. 1909 First kibbutz, Degania, and first modern all-Jewish city, Tel Aviv, founded. 1917 400 years of Ottoman rule ended by British conquest; British Foreign Minister Balfour pledges support for establishment of a "Jewish national home in Palestine"
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
British rule 1918-1947 1919-23 Third Aliya, mainly from Russia 1920 Histadrut (General Federation of Labor) and Haganah (Jewish defense organization) founded. Vaad Leumi (National Council) set up by Jewish community (Yishuv) to conduct its affairs. 1921 First moshav (cooperative village), Nahalal, founded. 1922 Britain granted Mandate for Palestine (Land of Israel) by League of Nations; Transjordan set up on three-fourths of the area, leaving one fourth for the Jewish national home. Jewish Agency representing Jewish community vis-a-vis Mandate authorities set up. 1924 Technion, first institute of technology, founded in Haifa. 1924-32 Fourth Aliya, mainly from Poland. 1925 Hebrew University of Jerusalem opened on Mount Scopus. 1929 Hebron Jews massacred by Arab terrorists. 1931 Etzel, Jewish underground organization, founded.
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1933-39 Fifth Aliya, mainly from Germany. 1936-39 Anti-Jewish riots instigated by Arab terrorists. 1939 Jewish immigration severely limited by British White Paper. 1939-45 World War II; Holocaust in Europe. 1941 Lehi underground movement formed; Palmach, strike force of Haganah, set up. 1944 Jewish Brigade formed as part of British forces. 1947 UN proposes the establishment of Arab and Jewish states in the Land. So no the State of Israel was not a consolation prize for having survived the Holocaust (Modern) STATE OF ISRAEL 1948 End of British Mandate (14 May) State of Israel proclaimed (14 May). Israel invaded by five Arab states (15 May). Israel Defense Forces (IDF) established. War of Independence (May 1948-July 1949). For more on the history of Israel 1949 to the present visit the Israeli government website
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
e r u t c e t i h Arc
When I went to Israel in the summer of 2019, I visited in various cities from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, Galilea, Safed and Haifa. Each had its own charm and unique character, but all felt distinctly Israeli. It begins with Jerusalem stone. Its everywhere. It gives even the newest of building an ancient feel, as if they have always been there. The building materials are only overshadowed by the building structure itself, a combination of every ancient culture to have left its fingerprint from Greco-Roman columns and arches to frescos and hanging gardens. History serenades you there.
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flora & fauna Israel really is the Land of Milk & Honey. It is vibrant with all kinds of natural abundance (except oil). There are 116 species of mammals native to Israel, 511 kinds of birds, 97 types of reptiles and seven types of amphibians. Some 2,780 types of plants grow countrywide, from Alpine flowers on northern mountain slopes to bright red coral peonies and desert papyrus reeds in the south. According to the Israeli government website, "Packed into Israel's small area are snow-covered mountains, parched deserts, fertile fields, lush woodlands and long stretches of sand dunes. No less than four different geographical zones are included in the State of Israel, and the country's climate ranges from semi-arid to temperate to subtropical". Its an oasis for just about every plant and animal, as if Noah opened his ark right there and they never left. *Noah's ark has been identified as likely being the ruin found in modern day Turkey.
pg. 50
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
CUISINE your
Bubbe
eat...and easy to
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do
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said an
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Israel!
pg. 51
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
My daughter once encountered an antisemite while in high school who told her Jews don't really have a cuisine...that we are known for being bad cooks. Well, that's clearly the farthest thing from the truth and certainly not something someone would say if they have been to Israel. From the Hummus to the Bourekas, Halava, coffee and everything in between, its a culinary playground. Your mouth will thank you for it...your hips maybe not so much.
pg. 52
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
and its not just the food... its the wine and the ambience and the people!
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
There is literally an Israel for everyone. In addition to the history buff, the nature lover, the foodie, there is spirituality galore. If you are Christian don't feel left out Christian history is everywhere from the Church of the Sepulchre in the Old City of David to the Sea of Galilea and the stations of the cross distinctly marked for easy following on Holy Week. pg. 54
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Birthright and just as there is an Israel for everyone, there is a birthright for every young Jew too. Choose from a birthright for foodies, for nature lovers, for adventure seekers, for people with special needs, and more. Taglit-Birthright Israel, also known as Birthright Israel or simply Birthright, is a notfor-profit educational organization that sponsors free ten-day heritage trips to Israel from Jerusalem to the Golan Heights for young adults of Jewish heritage, aged 18–32. Taglit is the Hebrew word for 'discovery'. Zachor Shoah says: Go Discover your birthright- Discover your soul pg. 55
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Politics & Conflict a brief overview of Israel-Palestine
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. This is at the crux of the conflict. While the woman in the picture above, likely believes she is lending her voice to a cause for equality (a two state solution), a strong democratic value, she is actually supporting the idea that Palestine has the right to eradicate Israel (the Jews) from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. This well intentioned woman, like so many in the West, have zero understanding of Israel's history (as shown in the previous pages) or Palestine's history for that matter. They also have little to no understanding of the realities of the region from culture to politics. pg. 56
The reality is unkind. It is unfortunate. It is harsh, but it is the truth. The truth is that there has never been a country with an ancestral people or culture called Palestine or Palestina. It is a cruel Roman invention meant to erase Jews from history. The Romans believed that Judaism would cease to exist when the Second Temple of Solomon was destroyed in the year 70 AD and the people mostly exiled into the Roman empire. At the time Judaism was a religion that centered on the Temple, with its priestly class and rituals and sacrifices. The Romans had good reason to believe that without this essential element the religion, the culture, and the language would disappear and so would the people. Thus giving the Romans the ultimate conquest. They chose to rename Israel also known as Judea at the time as Palestine, an already extinct culture from Greece, at times referred to as Philistines. Either way they were both fictitious by the year 70AD and had a history of animosity with the Jews. The Jews did not disappear as the Romans had predicted. Instead, they adapted. No longer requiring ritual animal sacrifices or blessings from the priestly class, instead they developed a strong network of rabbinical scholars that studied the Torah and the Talmud and developed Rabbinical holidays and ritual traditions. They maintained the reading of the Torah in chronological order each year in the original Hebrew. And they prayed facing Jerusalem in honor of the Old Temple with the hope of one day returning home. In the almost 2000 years since, my people have created a stronger connection to God, culture, community, and Judaism than may have existed before the Romans exiled them and destroyed the Temple. The Romans however have been a relic of the past since the year 410 AD. pg. 57
Repair the World: the Israel Edition
So who are the Palestinians? This is less clear. There is literally no archeological or anthropological evidence of Palestinians anywhere, not just Israel, prior to the creation of the term by the Romans. Whats more, even after this, the Arab tribes in the area did not adopt the term as a descriptor for themselves. Instead these have historically been people that were considered Syrian or Jordanian or Egyptian, but mostly simply Arabian. In the year 630 AD when Mohamed began the Islamic religion these people, like others in the area, converted to Islam. Some by choice others as a consequence of war. The term Palestinian did not become a widely used, accepted, and expected term in reference to the people of the region until the British Mandate in 1918. And the Palestinian people did not have a problem with the Jews until the rise of Hitler. *To learn more about this read How the Nazis Courted the Islamic World During WWII. Wait what? That's right, Hitler had a very cosy relationship with the Grand Mufti and "They politicized sacred texts like the Quran as well as religious imperatives, most notably the concept of jihad, in order to foment religious violence for political ends" ( Nastassja Shtrauchler). So everything you hear about Israeli-Palestinian conflict boils down to Nazi propaganda among the Islamic world, finding its way into the hands of contemporary totalitarian regimes like Iran that support Jihadist terrorists like Hamas. There is no occupation or apartheid state. There is only ongoing Nazi-esque antismetism. Choose your side of the "conflict" wisely.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
Un-learning to Learn: American Imperialism & Yellow Journalism
pg. 60
The generally accepted definition of Yellow Journalism is Yellow journalism and yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate, well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.
At the turn of the century (late 1800s) William Randolph Hearst (owner of the San Francisco Examiner and the New York Journal) and Joseph Pulitzer (owner of the New York World) entered into a heated competition over sales, abandoning journalistic integrity for "ratings". Hearst’s papers catered to urban working people, many of whom were recent immigrants. His papers favored labor unions, progressive taxation, and municipal ownership of utilities. They featured abundant pictures, advice to the lovelorn columns, and sentimental stories. Favoring Irish and German readers in particular, the papers condemned British influence and spread fears about the ‘yellow peril’ of Asian immigration. The media scene at the end of the 19th century was robust and highly competitive. It was also experimental, says W Joseph Campbell, a professor of communication at American University in Washington, D.C.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition According to history.com, "Most newspapers at the time had been typographically bland, with narrow columns and headlines and few illustrations. Then, starting in 1897, half-tone photographs were incorporated into daily issues. According to Campbell, yellow journalism, in turn, was a distinct genre that featured bold typography, multi-column headlines, generous and imaginative illustrations, as well as “a keen taste for self-promotion, and an inclination to take an activist role in news reporting.” In recent years it has been believed by many that this "war between the Journal and the World" led to an actual war - the Spanish American War. Although historians like Cambell dispute the validity of this claim, it is worth noting that once the two papers decided to focus on the rising tensions and rebellion in Cuba, anti-Spaniard sentiments grew, at times feverishly so, in the US and especially in the New York area. The papers printed sketches of what would be considered ( at any point in history) outrageous images of abuse, torture, and depravity.
pg. 62
Repair the World: the Israel Edition Of course, for these outrageous claims to take hold, they had to be rooted in stereotyped held by the general population in the United States. So that these newspapers weren't just in a race to be the #1 read paper , but also in a race to twist the minds of Americans away from logic and truth and towards irrational fears, lies, and hate.
And go to war we went. Even though it was known through our intelligence offices that the USS Maine was not sunk by the Spaniards, even though we knew human rights violations were not taking place, we engaged in war. Not to help the Cubans in their war for Independence, but to establish ourselves as the dominant nation in the region. Politically we were still fragile. Less than 100 years prior we had fought off the British, for a second time in the war of 1812. We were a bit paranoid about European countries trying to conquer us, and rightly so. But when we entered into the Spanish American war, we did two things unwittingly - 1. we became an imperialistic nation without intention but as a result of winning the war (we gained the Philippines and Puerto Rico). and 2 - we unintentionally legitimized yellow journalism.
It wasn't just that Americans believed a European nation colonizing an American one was bad, or that starving the people of that American country was unacceptable, but that the imperialistic nature of that European nation would seek to add to its insatiable hunger for power and control and make the US one of its many colonies. A colony that would be subjected to the depravity of a Swarthy Catholic crown. So while historians may believe that newspaper headlines did not influence President McCarthy's foreign policy, a growing call for justice through war among the voters may well have influenced the politicians. pg. 63
Repair the World: the Israel Edition Although yellow journalism was able to be subdued, it never fully went away. It remained in the form of the tabloid. Sadly, it has made a come back and increased in popularity through new forms of journalistic mediums like social media, internet sites, and TV cable news all of which are driven by popularity and not professional reputations. The height of our contemporary yellow journalism has been in the 21st century from the Iraq war as a result of "weapons of mass destruction" - that were never there - to the presidencies from Obama through Biden.
As a result, we are living in a time when journalists are news-makers and not news tellers and we are their play things grappling for the brightest, catchiest, most debasing headlines that feed our preconceptions, stereotypes, and fears with mountains of lies and hate in order to gain popularity and sell more product.
Newspapers that had regained their trustworthiness went out of print or became electronic versions of their old selves, either way joining the only real news medium of the 21st century - multimedia news (Cable and internet).
I do not believe in coincidences. Yellow Journalism came as industrialization began to really soar. Industrialization is a dehumanizing social structure and Yellow Journalism feeds of the most base of human emotions. How interesting that as they both rose to popularity, the world plummeted into a world war.
In a climate such as this, we are less free, less educated, less informed, and less righteous. We become gullible children with little recourse to discover the truth for ourselves. This pushes nations to become more powerful as their voters seek international security even from countries that were never a threat.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition So what should we learn from yellow journalism? Be skeptical of what you read or watch on television. News channels and news sources are not automatically engaging in reporting the news. Be aware that in a world driven by ratings and "likes" and cults of personality, trustworthiness is not the motivation behind the work, but rather persuasiveness. So ask yourself, is this speaking to my emotions or is it dry and unemotional. So do your own research, because if a story sounds "too good to be true" its likely not true. Wait a while before deciding something is fake. "Follow the money" because in a world driven by ratings and popularity, people can be bought. Life isn't easy so don't expect news stories to be simple. Think for yourself - if the media looks like they are trying to sell you a used car (everyone is very persuasive, unwilling to look at angles, etc) its best you look under the hood before you make that car yours. In the end its better to have been thought of as crazy and rebellious by the masses than to have to eat crow because you championed an issue that was based on lies.
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Repair the World: the Israel Edition
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