On Wednesday some anti-Semite nut job tried to shoot up the Holocaust memorial. What I’d like us to think about is how we react to hate and how we teach our kids to respond to anti-Semitism. Facts are facts. Anti-Semites killed Jews. My dad has a number on his arm to prove it. We need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. The question (here goes!) is: What is the price WE pay to fight anti-Semitism?
A story. As a former member if the Israel Defense Forces, I subsequently served a monthly stint every year in Miluyim (Israeli reserves). Sometimes I would find myself at a checkpoint outside of Eilat – Israel’s southern most city, and the only port city in the south. As such, it was considered a strategic asset, with special security protocols. We were commanded to “detain all those with an ‘eastern complexion.’” In Hebrew: “la’atzor kol echad im d’moot mizrachit”. So, being good soldiers, we followed orders. It got weird, as many of the guys in the unit were S’faradim (Jews of Mediterranean origins) and had dark skin, but we all knew what the order meant. You see an Arab. Pull him over. Take him off the bus.
Long-story short: An Eged bus came to our checkpoint. We got on. We checked the passengers’ I.Ds (those who looked Arab anyway). I got off the bus and saw that one of our guys had pulled off a gentleman with his wife. She was dressed in traditional Arab garb – a hijab and robe. And she was very very pregnant. He was from Jerusalem. He was okay. She was not. I think she came from Ramallah – in the West Bank. She didn’t have the proper papers. So she and her husband were not allowed to enter Eilat. I argued with my C.O. At least they gave her a chair to sit on, under the hot desert sun. They had to wait for a taxi to take them back north. I don’t think she was a terrorist.
What does fighting oppression do to us victims?
A few days ago, Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind of Brooklyn publicly declared that a memorial to the victims of Nazi genocide should only be in memory of Jews and not the other victims, such as Gays or the disabled. “To include these other groups diminishes their memory…These people are not in the same category as Jewish people with regards to the Holocaust…It is so vastly different. You cannot compare political prisoners with Jewish victims.” (http://www.nypost.com/seven/06082009/news/regionalnews/hikind__jews_only_173112.htm)
Tell that to my dad, whose barracks in Birkenau was directly across from the gypsies’ area. He remembers waking up to the shots and the screams as the Roma children were driven out to be burned. Assemblyman Hikind, where is your sense of all people being created B’tzelem Eloheem?
So what do we teach our kids? That only we Jews have a monopoly on suffering? That the world is against us and so we can do whatever we want to protect ourselves? Should we agree with Chabad Rabbi Manis Friedman, who wrote in the recent issue of Moment magazine that “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),”
(http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2009/2009-06/200906-Ask_Rabbis.html)
What do we tell our kids? How do we teach them compassionate self-preservation? How do we, the victims, not turn into the oppressors?
- Bringing the Sand Home – Take Aways From the RealSchool Summer Sandox - July 22, 2013
- Playing in the Sand: Getting Ready for the RealSchool Summer Sandbox - July 7, 2013
- Swimming Lessons - March 4, 2013