Dear Reader,
Assessing the potential damage in the community from the sudden fall of powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is our lead story this week. Amy Sara Clark and Doug Chandler explore several aspects of the unfolding story. Read more...
Israel correspondent Michele Chabin reports from Poland on the emotional ceremonymarking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In a related story , staff writer Steve Lipman looks at how Holocaust education has evolved in New York State's public schools. Israel correspondent Joshua Mitnick follows the controversy of House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress. The issue is now on the front burner in the Israeli election campaign.
Also on tap is our winter Education supplement, with stories from here to Houston on Israel.
Sexual Fantasies At Seminary? YCT’s Edgy Podcast Breaks New Ground; Classroom War Correspondents; Tackling The Day School Affordability Crisis.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015 
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
Have a good week.
The Editors.
Between the Lines
Gary Rosenblatt
Renaissance Man, Quietly Preserving Jewish Treasures
On a personal tour last fall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit of Near East artifacts from the ninth through seventh centuries B.C., George Blumenthal could hardly contain his excitement.
Though he is, at 70, a leader in the field of cellular communications, his clear passion is antiquities, with an emphasis on proving the veracity of the Hebrew Bible based on the archeological record. And he has spent millions of dollars funding a wide variety of projects digitizing works of art and historical documents, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to treasures of the Vatican, with the goal of making them accessible online on a global scale.
“I have no personal motive other than wanting the world to see what’s available,” says Blumenthal. He describes his contribution as “a way to honor my parents, honor and preserve my heritage, and leave something for my children.”
On our visit to the Met, Blumenthal led me through the maze of art works, citing chapter and verse along the way on how the inscription on this stele (ancient stone slab with writing on it) over here makes reference to the Israelite’s exodus from Egypt, and that one over there describes a battle the Prophet Isaiah writes of as well. Most importantly, he said with enthusiasm, the writing on the ninth century B.C. stele in front of us, telling of a Damascus leader’s defeat of two kings of Israel and Judah, refers to “the house of David.” Blumenthal explained that as the first non-biblical text to mention the kingship of David by name — secular proof, he believes, of the existence of Jewish history’s greatest king — it should be “meaningful and sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.” He ranks it second only to the Dead Sea Scrolls in importance of ancient findings in Israel.
“Every school should [bring students to] come here and see this,” he said.
James Snyder, director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, one of many institutions to benefit from Blumenthal’s initiatives and generosity, said, “George’s style is subtle, he’s kind of quiet. But he is very enthusiastic and ahead of the curve. He understands how technology and new media can help us communicate in an incredibly broad way through first-quality visual imagery.”
Snyder cited the response after Blumenthal funded a project done by his close associate, Ardon Bar Hama, an Israeli and world leader in digital photography, on photographing the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“In the first three days [the photos were posted on the museum’s site] there were 1.5 million unique visits from people in 212 countries.
“I didn’t even know there were that many countries,” Snyder added.
Michael Jesselson, a local businessman and philanthropist who shares Blumenthal’s interest in studying and collecting Jewish art and historical objects, described him as “creative, a visionary” —and willing to pay to preserve treasures and share their beauty on the Internet.
“I think of George in Renaissance terms, as patron,” he said, noting that Blumenthal works closely with Bar Hama and subsidizes much of his photographic work for the benefit of nonprofit institutions.
“He wants to save the Jewish people,” Jesselson said.
Blumenthal’s current projects with Bar Hama include creating a timeline of American Jewish history for the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, and photographing artifacts and documents associated with a new book on President Lincoln’s relationship with American Jews. The preservation of Hebrew manuscripts in the National Library of Russia may be next on the growing list.
He believes that confirming the accuracy of the Hebrew Bible and enhancing and highlighting significant Jewish objects over the centuries will deepen appreciation of the Jewish narrative. One of his plans is to create a central website to view all of the works he and Bar Hamas have collaborated on.
An admirer of Blumenthal’s work who asked not to be named thinks that given the indifference or lack of awareness of most Jews to Blumenthal’s online efforts, “There is a quixotic quality to his efforts. But I give him credit for trying,” he said.
From Oil Lamps
To Treasures
Blumenthal, who grew up in Cleveland, credits his “fantastic” parents for instilling in him a love of Zionism and the Jewish people, and an appreciation of classical art and history; the latter stemmed from a family visit to Rome and the Colosseum when he was 11.
His serious interest in archaeology and the history of the monotheistic religions began about 20 years ago when he stopped into an antiquities shop near the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and was taken with four oil lamps from the Bronze and Iron Ages, spanning from the days of Abraham to King David. “I thought, ‘these four lamps tell the story of the Jewish people. They’re a national treasure.’” He started buying oil lamps as gifts and later viewed prominent collections of ancient Jewish relics. His hobby became a pursuit, and a subscription to the Biblical Archaeology Review led to a deeper understanding of the history and context of ancient life in what is now the Mideast.
In 2003, Blumenthal said he had an epiphany of sorts. He sought permission from the Zionist Archives to have Bar Hama digitally photograph its collection of Zionist posters. “When I saw how Ardon made those images jump off the page, I realized the potential of what we could do,” he recalled.
The Bar Hama renditions became popular, and a sampling of them graced the wall over the exit ramp of Ben-Gurion Airport several years ago.
With Bar Hama’s work of high quality, great speed and portability — “his studio is in his knapsack,” Blumenthal says — the Israeli photographer has become highly sought after. Blumenthal is usually alongside, demonstrating to museums and other institutions how they can save time and money, and enhance their collections, through digitization. He often encourages them to make a sampling of the Bar Hama photos to show to potential donors as a means of fundraising.
“I’ve never met anyone like George,” said Barbara Haws, archivist and historian for the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Blumenthal’s “long-term, big vision,” she said, has led the Philharmonic to undertake a project that will digitize over four million pages, going back to its creation in 1842.
She said that thanks to Bar Hama’s work, “we can get donors excited about the project” by showing them, for example, Leonard Bernstein’s debut program from 1942, the memo of his being hired, showing how much he was paid, and more. All of it can be read on original documents.
“No one else has such a big idea to go around the world and digitize,” said Haws. “We need more Georges.”
In conversation, noting his interest in Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, Blumenthal can rattle off a dozen past, current and upcoming projects, with detailed stories, one morphing into the next. Photographing the Cairo Geniza for the Jewish Theological Seminary. Working with a Christian Evangelical group on their The Bible In Literature project. A venture with YIVO. Getting access to closely guarded vaults at the Vatican so Bar Hama can photograph four Hebrew manuscripts. At Oxford, a Mishnah Torah signed by Maimonides. Working with the office of the prime minister of Israel to restore Jewish heritage sites and create websites. The list goes on, transcending theological boundaries.
“I spend a lot of time documenting original source material,” Blumenthal says. “It’s exciting to offer historical proof of the contextuality of the Hebrew Bible, to show that King David and Hezekiah and Isaiah were real people.”
A key motivation for his work is “connecting young people to Israel,” he says, especially at a time of concern over younger Jews distancing themselves from the Jewish state. As a final point, he adds that he wants to prod fellow philanthropists to leverage their dollars thoughtfully. “I hope my work shows that you can do a lot with a relatively little bit of money,” he says, “if you put your energy into it.”
A Golden Thread Of Providence
Special To The Jewish Week
History can change by very slim margins: Had Blucher been a little late to Waterloo or, as Pascal put it, had Cleopatra’s nose been longer, the world would have been different.
For all its calamities, Jewish history is studded with astonishing stories of survival. Had Yochanan Ben Zakkai not asked for Yavneh, had the Maccabees not triumphed, had the rigidity of the Karaites prevailed over the arguments of Saadiah and the defenders of rabbinic Judaism, we would have gone the way of most small peoples who have vanished. Ironically, the names of once-formidable nations — from the Jebusites to the Philistines to empires such as Babylonia and Assyria — are remembered because on their march to oblivion they brushed up against the tiny nation of Israel.
No one can know what initiative or incident or thinker or skirmish or decision will guide the Jewish future. There are troubling signs, to be sure. Yet through our past runs a golden thread of providence that has not been snapped by catastrophe, enmity or indifference. So Jews continue to study, learn, defend and treasure our tradition, never knowing what might decide what is erased and what will endure.
Rabbi David Wolpe is spiritual leader of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter: @RabbiWolpe. His latest book, “David: The Divided Heart” (Yale University Press), has recently been published.
Sexual Fantasies At Seminary? YCT’s Edgy Podcast Breaks New Ground; Classroom War Correspondents; Tackling The Day School Affordability Crisis.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
INSIDE THIS SPECIAL SECTION
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Dublin's Temple Bar, in the city's cobblestoned central nightlife district. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS.
TRAVEL
Irish Pluralism On Display
Hilary Larson
Travel Writer
Tucked into the Gothic arches and dank, mossy halls of Trinity College Dublin is the Weingreen Biblical Antiquities Museum. It’s a small collection of artifacts from around the eastern Mediterranean, spanning the ninth millennium B.C.E. to the late Middle Ages, and it was renamed in the 1970s to honor one Professor Weingreen, a Hebrew scholar who taught at Trinity for 40 years.
The Weingreen Museum is as good a metaphor as any for contemporary Dublin — a city that is at once quintessentially Irish and also increasingly cosmopolitan, with a small but well-integrated Jewish community.
What always surprises me about Dublin, city of shamrocks and Molly and Leopold Bloom, is its intimate scale. Dublin feels much more like a friendly small town that just happens to have a few crowded squares and busy boulevards.
That friendliness extends, in large part, to relations between the many national, ethnic and cultural groups who now call Dublin home — everyone from the workers to shop clerks is likely to hail from Poland, India, China or Nigeria. With religious tensions running high in Europe these days, Dublin’s pluralism feels relatively comfortable.
And while Ireland, like every country in Europe, has its own history of anti-Semitism, Irish Jews I have spoken with say they find Dublin to be a friendlier place for Jews than many parts of the Continent.
Indeed, according to local Jewish organizations, the Irish-Jewish community — which dates back a thousand years, but has never been particularly large — is actually growing, thanks to an influx of Jewish professionals drawn to Ireland’s recent economic boom and the proliferation of technology corporations.
Dublin’s Jewish population is now estimated at around 1,300, more than half the Irish total, supporting a well-established network of synagogues, schools and services. Many visitors call before stopping by the Dublin Hebrew Congregation, a major landmark in the city center; formed by the merger of two synagogues a decade ago, it is Dublin’s central Jewish institution.
For a comprehensive look at Irish Jewry — whose modern community coalesced with waves of European immigration between the late 19th and early 20th centuries — head to the Irish Jewish Museum, a modest but lovingly preserved collection of pictures and artifacts documenting Irish-Jewish history. The museum is housed in what used to be the Walworth Synagogue, which closed down in the 1970s as the once-Jewish Portobello neighborhood saw an exodus to the suburbs. After years of neglect, the temple was refurbished as a centrally located museum, proudly inaugurated by Irish-born Israeli President Chaim Herzog in the mid-1980s.
Herzog is just one of many historically prominent Irish Jews, and he is fondly remembered not only at the museum, but also at the Herzog Centre for Jewish and Near Eastern Religion and Culture at Trinity College. Given that Herzog’s own father was Ireland’s chief rabbi in the early 1900s, it is fitting that Trinity chose the Herzog name to honor when dedicating Ireland’s first — and still only — university center devoted to Jewish scholarship. In addition to courses and Holocaust education, the Herzog Centre also hosts lectures and other public events.
The broader diversity of modern Europe is celebrated at the annual Silk Road Film Festival in March, an opportunity to view films from across the region that encompassed the ancient Silk Road, from Southern Europe through the Middle East to Central and East Asia. The Silk Road Festival is held from March 18-22, just after Ireland’s biggest party: St. Patrick’s Festival — yes, they need four days, not one.
From March 14-17, Dublin goes wild with an open-air celebration all over town. Girls wear short skirts and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” antennae, boys travel in packs from pub to pub, and everyone wears green. The action centers around Temple Bar, the cobblestoned central nightlife district that remains distinctly local despite all the tourism.
The same could be said of Dublin overall. A decade after the so-called Celtic Tiger economic boom burned and then crashed, Dublin still has plenty of dusty, wooden-floor bookshops, cafés and pubs where you feel right at home the first time you enter.
And every day of the year, it’s St. Patrick’s favorite hue in St. Stephen’s Green, the lovely, landscaped park at the heart of the city. If it starts to rain, you can duck into one of Dublin’s newest — and most delightful — attractions: the Little Museum, a free collection devoted to events of Ireland’s 20th century. Housed in a Georgian mansion just off the park, the Little Museum offers a look at James Joyce, U2 and plenty more of what gives this city its enduring appeal.
editor@Jewishweek.org
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Nominations are now being accepted for our annual
"36 Under 36" issue.
This issue will announce on June 5, the thirty-six young visionaries, thinkers, social justice advocates, educators, philanthropists and artists who are reinventing, and broadening, the Jewish community.
Deadline for nominations is March 2.
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TOP STORIES
Community Assessing Fallout From Silver's Fall
Amy Sara Clark and Doug Chandler
As his Lower East Side constituents stand by him, anxiety is palpable in nonprofit sector.
Sheldon Silver: Accused of $4 million kickback scheme. Getty Images
In the week since U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged Sheldon Silver with garnering more than $4 million in bribes in kickbacks, the city’s Jewish leaders — as well as the Assembly speaker’s Lower East Side constituents — have been reeling from his downfall.
Many are defending his character, others are questioning it. Some are glad to see a progressive leader at odds with the views of many yeshivish and chasidic voters lose his power.
But those on all sides are weighing the same question: To what extent will Jewish causes will be hurt by Silver’s downfall as he loses his place as one-third of the proverbial “three men in a room” who decide things in Albany.
In terms of funding for Jewish nonprofits, all agree it doesn’t look good.
And this doesn’t factor in the influence the assembly speaker has on which social service providers get the contracts from state agencies — not to mention how much money those agencies have to allocate.
But though some describe the palpable anxiety among organizations that benefit from Silver’s amassed power as “an earthquake” or “a blizzard,” others say it won’t be quite that bad.
“You lose a powerful and an influential friend, and it’s going to make your job harder, no matter what the merits and strength of your program are,” said Gerald Benjamin, a political scientist at SUNY New Paltz who closely follows state government. “I’m confident many of those programs are of great quality, but it’s good to have friends.”
Any politician is going to advocate for worthy nonprofits in his or her district, but not only did Silver have more power, he also had a better understanding of the needs of his Jewish constituents, said Ezra Friedlander, a political consultant who works with Orthodox nonprofits and political organizations. “He’s always been very sensitive to vulnerable populations, and his understanding of what the community needs are. He’s had the ability to hone in on them for 40 years. It’s not something you can acquire overnight.”
“For [social service] providers it’s a very real concern,” he added. “People like continuity. People are naturally worried when there’s the potential of destruction of someone at the highest level of government understanding what their needs are.”
For example, Silver helped broker the deal that cut down on red tape for families seeking tuition reimbursement for special education programs at private schools, he said, something Jewish organizations have been advocating for years.
But on other legislation that Orthodox Jewish groups have been urging, the speaker’s downfall could have a silver lining. On such issues as private school vouchers and whether religious organizations should be exempt from same-sex marriage requirements, Silver tends to side with the progressives.
“He was a liberal progressive creature, who also goes to shul,” one observer said. “[Borough Park] Assemblyman Dov Hikind, he wears his Jewishness on this sleeve. Shelly, all his political career, was trying to distance himself from any kind of Jewish religious thing. He had to be pressured to go along with anything that would help yeshivas. From what I know, chances might be better [without Silver in power], because he had this complex; he was always worried about being seen as helping of his own.”
But across the East River, Silver’s constituents have stood firm behind him, at least for now.
“They don’t make people as good as Shelly Silver,” one woman said last Friday as she stood with a shopping cart outside East Side Glatt, a kosher butcher’s shop on the Lower East Side.
“He’s a diamond, and any time people need help in this neighborhood, they call Shelly Silver,” said the woman, an Orthodox Jew who wished to remain anonymous but gave her age as 61. What’s more, she said, the crimes a federal prosecutor is now saying he committed “are not typical of him.”
Speaking several hours before the onset of Shabbat, a day after Bharara slammed Silver with five counts of fraud and extortion, the woman seemed to reflect the consensus among Orthodox Jews in the neighborhood who spoke to The Jewish Week.
Silver, who maintains his innocence, has held a seat in the New York State Assembly since 1976 and was elected speaker of that body in 1994, making the shy, soft-spoken politician one of the most powerful people in the state and one of the city’s most important defenders. But he’s also known to Jewish residents of the Lower East Side as a neighbor who grew up in a local tenements building, sent his four children to the same schools as they did and still lives with his wife, Rosa, in one of the area’s co-ops.
The complaints against Silver say he abused his office by obtaining $4 million in bribes and kickbacks over the course of 15 years. One particularly odious allegation is that he used the 9/11 attacks to justify steering $500,000 in public funds to an oncologist who helped him pocket millions of dollars in bogus “referral fees.” As a pretext for the scheme, prosecutors say, he said the funds would advance research into mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by asbestos. Another accusation is that he steered real-estate developers to the same law firm, which, in turn, paid him kickbacks for the business.
But Silver’s neighbors interviewed last Friday found the allegations hard to believe.
Inside East Side Glatt, Baruch Weiss, the shop’s bearded, Yiddish-accented owner, called the charges a “bilbul,” the Yiddish word for libel or smear. “In three weeks,” he said, “they’re going to dismiss everything.”
Not everyone on Grand Street wanted to talk about Silver.
One heavy-set man, waiting for his order at the counter of East Side Glatt, said he didn’t know much about the allegations against Silver. But “if you ask me what I think of the gefilte fish,” he added, motioning to the display of delicacies, “that I can give you an answer about.”
But most weren’t so reluctant.
“I have only good things to say,”
“He gets along with everybody,” said Nathan, 53, who declined to give his last name, a teacher who often helps out at Moishe’s Bakery, as he did last Friday. “I’m friendly with his son. … The wife comes in. She’s very cordial, very nice to everybody.”
Shopping in the grocery store next store, East Side Kosher, another teacher said he, too, knew Silver from the neighborhood.
“If anything is bothering anyone in the community, you can [easily] relay that message to Mr. Silver,” said David Dinter, 33, a math instructor.
The complaints against Silver are “upsetting” to Dinter, who said “the [legal] process has to be played out” before he can believe any of them. But until that happens, Dinter added, he believes Silver’s declaration of innocence.
Silver’s other defenders in the neighborhood include Martin Cohen, 55, who runs a storefront law and business practice on the corner of Grand and Essex, one of the area’s main hubs.
An attorney who has lived on the Lower East Side for 50 years, Cohen said he believes people “in high positions are targeted for special treatment, either positive or negative,” and that being speaker of the Assembly would make anyone a target.
He’s also convinced that the allegations against Silver don’t rise to the level of criminality, said Cohen, whose office is decorated with Jewish art and antiques, including three menorahs. The receptionist’s desk at which he greeted a reporter featured two pushke boxes, one for the Jewish National Fund, another for a kosher food pantry, under a framed, Hebrew version of Pslam 23, a biblical passage.
In Cohen’s view, describing the money Silver received as kickbacks, rather than referral fees, is inaccurate. “Everybody in the real-estate world uses tax-certiary attorneys, and asking people you meet, however you might meet them, to use attorneys you may have some association with is not abusing your office.”
He believes the charges are politically motivated, made by a federal prosecutor eager to improve “his standing and fame,” Cohen said. “I hope that when the final chapter is written, his good name and sterling reputation for being a mensch, a good neighbor and an honest man are restored.”
But outside of the Lower East Side, his support has been steadily waning. After more and more politicians joined the call for him to reisgn as speaker, he confirmed Tuesday that he wouldn't "hinder a succession process," according to The New York Times.
And what about the shanda factor with the demise of yet another Jewish power broker due to accusations of ethical breaches? Thanks to Albany’s widespread corruption, Silver’s fall won’t tarnish the rest of the tribe, said Benjamin, the New Paltz professor.
“It’s not going to be systematically consequential for Jews that a Jewish guy did some bad thing and got in trouble for it. We had a governor who was Jewish, and consorted with prostitutes. It didn’t hurt Jews,” he said.
“Go on the Citizen’s Union website and look at their list of all legislators indicted for felony crimes or removed for ethical violations since 2000,” he added. “You’ll be comforted by their diversity.”
Silver’s fall, he said, “It’s going to hurt Sheldon Silver. And it might hurt certain interests that he’s associated with. But its not going to hurt the Jewish community as a whole.”
Note: This story was updated on Jan. 28 to include the confirmation that Sheldon Silver would be replaced as speaker. We also removed Henry Street Settlement from the list of Jewish groups that received funding through Silver because the group isn't Jewish.
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Survivors Draw Chilling Line From Auschwitz To Paris
Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent
At the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz liberation, a reminder of anti-Semitism’s persistence.
Mordechai Ronen, who was a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp when he was 11. Getty Images
Oswiecim, Poland — The 300 Auschwitz survivors who commemorated the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau at the death camp this week were motivated by two things: a heartfelt need for some closure and the desire — some called it a mission — to warn the world that the anti-Semitism and hatred that spawned the Shoah are still all around us.
Prior to, during and following the tearful ceremony, held in a huge heated tent in front of the camp’s infamous train station, the survivors, including 21 from the U.S., sounded the alarm before anyone who would listen.
“I have a story to tell and I feel it’s important to tell it,” Haim Liss, an Israeli Auschwitz survivor born in Lodz, told The Jewish Week just hours after the Auschwitz ceremony.
Liss, 84, who has spoken to countless youth groups about his wartime experiences, said he feels it is imperative to impart his story to the younger generation.
“I speak to the young people and tell them I was 13 years old when I arrived at Auschwitz after living in the Lodz ghetto. I explain how I was affected and how I lost my mother and my father. If I don’t share this information it will be lost.”
During the commemoration, which was organized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and the International Auschwitz Council in coordination with the Polish government, speakers urged world leaders to heed the lessons of the Holocaust to recognize and fight the anti-Semitism and xenophobia running rampant in much of the world.
“This awful place stands as a reminder that anti-Semitism leads to death. It is a reminder that propaganda leads to anti-Semitism,” Ronald Lauder, president of theWorld Jewish Congress, told the survivors and world leaders who assembled in front of the train station that brought more than a million people, the vast majority of them Jews, to the death camp.
“Once again, young Jewish boys are afraid to wear yarmulkes on the streets of Paris and Budapest and London. Once again,” Lauder implored, “Jewish businesses are targeted. And once again, Jewish families are fleeing Europe.”
The World Jewish Congress and The USC Shoah Foundation, housed at the University of Southern California, brought the American survivors to Auschwitz.
Roman Kent, an Auschwitz survivor, told the assembled dignitaries that many people in the world are actively working to minimize the Holocaust.
“Unfortunately, there is an effort by the perpetrators and the deniers and the ignorant, abetted by much of the media, to sanitize the Shoah. They employ language to deny the Holocaust so it appears less wicked and brutal.”
Kent said it “has become routine” to describe murdered Holocaust victims as “lost.”
“Lost does not adequately describe what happened. Eleven million people including six million Jews and 1.5 million Jewish children were not lost or misplaced. These children were murdered, as were the generations that would have followed them. We hear that millions ‘perished,’ but they did not perish in the normal sense of the word. They were viciously murdered and burned in the crematoria.”
By “cleansing” the Holocaust “we lessen the atrocities of the perpetrators. It is now up to the leaders of the world, but there remains so much more to be done. We must be involved and stay involved.”
Kent said that if he had the power he would add an 11th commandment: “You should never, ever, be a bystander.”
During a reception for the survivors the night before the Auschwitz ceremony, the director Steven Spielberg thanked the survivors for having the courage to tell their stories in order to educate future generations.
“We are the custodians of your testimonies. They will survive as long as children can listen to your words,” Spielberg said, referring to the 53,000 Holocaust testimonies his organization, the Shoah Foundation, has taped and archived over the years.
“We are facing anti-Semites, extremists, religious fanatics who want to strip you of your past, of your identity and of your story,” Spielberg said. “There are growing efforts to banish Jews from Europe,” the director said.
The USC Shoah Foundation, the organization he created after filming “Schindler’s List” and talking to survivors, sponsored the visit to Auschwitz of 25 international educators and a dozen students. The group traveled to Poland for a four-day series of workshops on how to utilize the testimony archive for educational purposes; the series culminated with a visit to Auschwitz and conversations with survivors.
“This is a trip that will assure that the next generation will ‘get it,’” said Beth Meyerowitz, a USC professor of psychology who accompanied the Shoah Foundation educators and students to Poland. Meyerowitz said Spielberg spent a day with the group.
Johanna Soderholm, an educator from Finland, contrasted her first trip to Auschwitz in 1987 with her visit this week.
Back then there were pictures on the wall. Now we can hear and see the survivors through their testimonies. We can connect with them and the Holocaust on an emotional level.”
Edgar Wildfeuer, 90, came here this week from Argentina with his daughter, Doris Wildfeuer, wanting to show her both the camp he survived and city where he grew up: Krakow, with its parks and market squares, its church spires and streetcars. They planned to visit the street where he had lived and the synagogue where he had his bar mitzvah.
Wildfeuer, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, lost 32 relatives.
“I was the only one left,” he told JTA.
Still, his daughter said, “He wanted to show me not only that place but the place where he grew up and was happy.”
Charlotte Masters, a 16-year-old student from Washington, D.C., called the visit to Poland “life changing and amazing.”
“Until you come here you can’t really comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust,” she said. “You can’t forget it or look past it.”
Masters said that the people she encountered in Poland also encourage the teachers and students “to focus on the heroes as well.”
If the visit to Auschwitz and the testimonies project taught her one thing, Masters said, “it is that my generation must learn from the past.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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As Society Changes, So Does Holocaust Education
Steve Lipman
Staff WriterOn 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, classes in New York public schools focus on other genocides.
‘For better or worse, the books have become metaphors.
As Auschwitz survivors and their children this week commemorate the 70th anniversary of the death camp’s liberation and mourn the Shoah’s Six Million Jewish victims, Holocaust education in New York State, and elsewhere in the country, looks far different than it did a generation ago.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is still read by countless thousands of middle-school students, as is Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” his harrowing memoir of surviving the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. But more often than not, these iconic books have, over the years, become springboards to wider discussions about genocides in many other times, and many other settings. And the Jewish losses they so painfully document have merged with the losses suffered by African slaves during the Middle Passage, and those suffered by Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, or by Armenians at the hands of the Turks.
For better or worse, the books have become metaphors, part of an effort to sync Holocaust education with the wider societal trends of multiculturalism and the emphasis on human rights.
“We feel it is imperative today to teach the lessons of the Holocaust rather than focus solely on the historic events of 1933-’45,” Millie Jasper, executive director of theHolocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains, said in an email interview.
The center sponsors educator trips to Germany and Poland and an annual Human Rights Institute for high school student leaders; it has also developed a Holocaust curriculum guide, which focuses on the Jewish experience during World War II but refers to the “contemporary connection” of such genocides as Rwanda’s in 1994. In a sign of the times, a few years ago the center changed its name from the Westchester Holocaust Education Center.
The emerging emphasis in Holocaust education answers the question, How do you make an event that took place in the middle of the previous century relevant to contemporary high school students?
Though it’s largely a question for schools in areas with few Jewish students, it also applies in New York City, where even the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of survivors often lack personal stories that they heard from their relatives and can share with their classmates.
Among the answers supplied by schools across the country are the following:
n the “Paper Clips Project” conducted by students at a rural Tennessee middle school who set out to collect six million paper clips and ended up with more than 30 million paper clips and an award-winning documentary made about their efforts;
n a play, “Life in a Jar,” about Warsaw Ghetto rescuer Irena Sendler, written and performed in rural Kansas by high school students who also collected funds for Sendler and other aging rescuers;
n and, at the Bronx High School of Science, a pioneer institution in Holocaust Education, a Holocaust curriculum that has expanded into an annual Tolerance Day, in which students in the Holocaust class play a prominent role is dispelling stereotypes, and into a permanent Holocaust Museum and Studies Center.
Like the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Manhattan, which also runs training programs for educators, has sponsored such programs as a Rwandan Genocide and Holocaust Remembrance Day, and a seminar on genocide in Darfur.
This more universalistic approach to Holocaust education is often a matter of controversy in parts of the Jewish community, especially in survivor circles, which work to preserve the Holocaust’s uniquely Jewish character.
To teach high school students in New York State the facts — and wider lessons — of the Nazis’ plan to annihilate Europe’s Jews, the state for two decades has ranked among five states in the country that make some education of the Holocaust a requirement at the high school level.
The others are New Jersey, Florida, Illinois and California, all of which have sizable Jewish populations, including many Holocaust survivors.
While New York State makes Holocaust education mandatory in the public schools, its Education Department does not provide an official curriculum. The quantity and emphasis of each school’s Holocaust education is left up to individual instructors and department heads of local schools.
“They must get some education” on the topic, usually from a few days to two weeks worth, said Alan Singer, a professor of secondary at Hofstra University in Hempstead, L.I., who is an expert on the Holocaust education in the state’s public schools. “It’s not just ancient history,” he added.
A former New York City high school social studies teacher, Singer is editor of Social Science Docket, a joint publication of the New York and New Jersey Councils for the Social Studies.
He believes the main challenge for teachers presenting a Holocaust curriculum is generational; the Jewish experience in World War II seems far removed from contemporary lives, he said. “Today, it’s ancient history for students. It’s also ancient history for teachers,” few of whom have a personal connection with the Shoah or with Holocaust survivors.
The Holocaust is commonly taught in the schools’ eighth, ninth and 10th grades, alternating between English classes and social studies classes.
“There is no state-prescribed curriculum that school districts must follow,” said Jeanne Beattie, a spokeswoman for the Education Department. “Generally, school boards have the authority to prescribe the course of study in the schools of their districts.”
New Jersey, on the other hand, has produced extensive Holocaust curriculum guides; the high school level curriculum includes such topics as “The Nature of Human Behavior,” “Resistance, Intervention and Rescue,” and “Issues of Conscience and Moral Responsibility.”
Since New York state shifted from a multicultural focus in 1997 to an emphasis on human rights, the Holocaust, along with the trans-Atlantic slave trade that brought millions of Africans to this country, and the mid-19th century Irish potato famine that led to widespread Irish immigration, have all played a central part in public schools’ social studies curricula, Singer said.
“Lots of schools have developed their own packages” of Holocaust education resources, said Singer, often turning to a variety of Jewish and civic organizations that have produced their own educational materials. Many of these organizations also sponsor extensive training seminars for teachers who teach about the Holocaust, as well as Holocaust-centered sensitivity programs.
One sign of interest in this topic: Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was to give a speech this week on “Teaching about the Holocaust after 70 years” at an international Conference on Holocaust Remembrance in Krakow, Poland.
steve@jewishweek.org
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Netanyahu's 'Joint' Pain
Joshua Mitnick
Israel Correspondent
Boehner’s invitation a boon to Bibi? Getty Images
Tel Aviv — The awkward state of Israeli relations with the U.S. administration has been in the mix as an issue in the Israeli election campaign ever since the ruling coalition fell apart in December.
But the debate has moved into the campaign spotlight and is likely to remain there after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sparked a new row with the White House by accepting a surprise invitation from House Speaker John Boehner to address a joint session of Congress on Iran just two weeks before the election.
The planned address, expected to focus on the question of whether or not the U.S. should push for new sanctions, has been criticized across the political spectrum as a ploy to give the prime minister a boost for his re-election campaign and congressional Republicans a popular foil in their drive to attack the Obama administration’s handling of Iranian nuclear talks. Both the prime minister and the speaker were accused of cooking up the idea behind the back of the administration, and provoking White House anger at Israel.
Put on the defensive, Netanyahu warned this week that an agreement between world powers and Iran that would leave the Islamic Republic as a nuclear threshold state is looming, and that it his obligation to “go to anyplace to voice Israel’s diplomatic position and to defend its future.”
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer echoed that argument, saying at an Israel Bonds gathering in Boca Raton, Fla., it was the prime minster’s “sacred duty” to appear in the most powerful legislature in the world to defend Israel. He added that “the world is more dangerous for Jews when they are silent.”
The move makes sense for the prime minister because two weeks before Israel’s election, the trip to the U.S. will focus Israeli attention on the threat of Iran and away from socioeconomic problems of Israelis, where he suffers from weak support, said Tal Schneider, an Israeli political blogger. The White House, which said it was blindsided by the Boehner invitation, has refused to meet with the prime minister, citing a long-held policy of staying out of the Israeli election, a snub that will likely tarnish the visit. Schneider and other Israeli commentators accused Netanyahu of hurting ties with the U.S. administration for political gain.
“His one goal is to win the election, and to do it he has to talk only about Iran. … Talking about the economy is bad for him, so he’s avoiding it,” she said. “He doesn’t mind blowing everything else up along the way,” she said, referring to the ties with the Obama administration in the remaining two year’s of the president’s term.
Schneider also accused Boehner of meddling in Israeli politics. “What he just did is stepping into our election, and I find it very rude,” she said.
Israeli media gave prominent attention to criticism against Netanyahu’s voiced on Fox News — which is normally sympathetic to Israel — by Chris Wallace and Shepard Smith as evidence that the prime minister’s trip is not playing well in the U.S. either. On Tuesday, New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, a leading Democratic proponent of stiffer sanctions, withdrew support for passing a sanctions resolution until late March. Observers argue that the withdrawal of support from some congressional Democrats is proof that the prime minister’s planned visit to Congress might be backfiring.
If the address to a joint session of Congress could tip the scales toward a harder U.S. line on Iran, absorbing a hit to relations with the U.S. administration could be justified, said Jonathan Rhynhold, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University. “Because, according to many opinions, this agreement is going to be damaging.”
However, with Democratic support on sanctions eroding, the trip looks more and more like a gambit that will undermine support for Israel among Democrats. Late last week House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi complained that the four leaders of Congress had not been consulted.
“This is just showmanship that chips away at bipartisanship for nothing,” said Rhynhold. He added that the criticism of Netanyahu coming from all sides could erode support during the election. “If the echoes of that message filter into the mainstream consciousness, it will be a blow to Bibi’s standing on what is considered his home turf. The public thinks he is the strongest on foreign affairs and defense.”
In the debate over foreign policy, Netanyahu has an advantage because most of the public agrees with his claim that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas bears most of the responsibility for the collapsed peace talks in 2014. But, sensing a Netanyahu vulnerability on national security, election opponents are now talking about Israel’s growing international isolation and Netanyahu’s handling of ties with the U.S., which are seen by many Israelis as crucial to survive. Rhynhold said the Bibi-Boehner move could swing votes away from Netanyahu.
“It is extremely hard for the center and the left to move any votes away from the right over foreign and security policy,” said Rhynhold. However, U.S.-Israel relations “trumps the divide.”
Some top American Jewish leaders, such as Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman, have also criticized the Israeli prime minister for accepting the Boehner invite. Others in Israel said that they too were blindsided by the announcement.
“Right now we’re still in shock mode; we’re trying to figure out where the pieces are falling,” said an American Jewish official familiar with the Israeli-U.S. relations. The move makes our “lives more complicated.”
editor@jewishweek.org
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