Two weeks after Yom HaShoah v’Hagvura (Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day), the many speeches and events held on that solemn day across Israel still echo, even as the country quickly returned to its everyday security, diplomatic, political, social and economic challenges.
 
As in the past 19 years, the B’nai B’rith World Center organized together with the Jewish National Fund (KKL) their central commemorative event at the B’nai B’rith Martyrs Forest. Since its inception, this event has focused, uniquely, on the heroism of Jewish rescuers during the Holocaust. Well over 1,000 people were present—most of them youngsters, including the musical troupe.

One of the 13 Jewish rescuers who posthumously received the Jewish Rescuers Citation—a joint program of the B’nai B’rith World Center and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust—was Anna van Dam-Drukker, a Dutch convert to Judaism and a student of medicine. With the advice of her rabbi she obtained a falsified baptism certificate and was registered as a Christian so that she could assist other persecuted Jews. At the beginning of 1943 she was active with the students' underground movement in Amsterdam (ASG) headed by Righteous Among the Nations Piet Meerburg, which hid 350 Jewish children in Christian homes, saving their lives. Van Dam-Drukker herself smuggled children from Amsterdam—also from the De Creche—to remote villages. She was arrested on Nov. 22, 1943 after she heroically extricated a child from a hidden location after it became known that the girl was to be handed over to the Germans the next day. Van Dam-Drukker was imprisoned in seven concentration camps, including Auschwitz where she served as a physician. After the war she helped to find the children she hid; some of whom the Dutch government petitioned the court against their return to their Jewish birth family.

In tribute to van Dam-Drukker and the other Jewish rescuers, Dutch ambassador Hans Docter delivered a moving address at our ceremony that is worth reading in full as it touches both on the tragedies and triumphs of Dutch Jewry during the Holocaust. It is one of speeches that still echo.

“It is a great honor to be with you today on this special day. In a morning like this, when the weather is beautiful and nature is beautiful, the Holocaust seems far away. We think it is forgotten, but actually it is not. Survivors are still among us and the ugly head of anti-Semitism is raising its head again. We have to stand shoulder to shoulder to combat this, for the future of all beautiful young people who also gave us beautiful music today. We have to work together—Jews and non-Jews alike—to combat this and ensure a safer future for all. [Although] the atrocities currently perpetrated by Russia in the Ukraine … are of an entirely different order, [these are] also the kind of atrocities that we have to work together to stop and it reminds us that the human capacity for evil is still great.

Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, began yesterday at sundown. This was my third Yom HaShoah in Israel, and with every year that passes I find it more moving. By law all the bars and restaurants are closed, which, for a moment, makes public life come to a standstill. The normally busy streets are hit with silence, and Israelis turn their attention to remember the six million Jews who were murdered in the Shoah by Nazi Germany and their collaborators. The victims of the Shoah were members of our communities, our families, our friends and our neighbors, and the absence of each and every person is felt to this day.

Here, at the Forest of the Martyrs, six million trees were planted in memory of the innocent Jewish lives that were cut short. It is our responsibility to keep these six million memories alive and to say today, and every day, Never Again. In Israel and all around the world, there are fewer and fewer survivors living amongst us, fewer people who can share personal memories of the Shoah with the generations born after them. It is our responsibility to carry their memories forward and ensure that humanity does not repeat its gravest crimes.

The Shoah was an especially dark time in the history of the Netherlands. About 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was murdered in the Shoah—the highest percentage in occupied western Europe. There are a number of factors which explain this unusual high percentage, one being that too many Dutch civil servants carried out the orders of the Nazi occupiers and failed to protect their Jewish compatriots. The Dutch civil administration also bears responsibility, since they had organized records that indicated the numbers of Jews in the Netherlands, together with information on where they lived. These are painful facts, but we must face them and acknowledge responsibility. Acknowledging the aspects in which we failed also gives us the opportunity to remember and honor those who stood up against the Nazis with greater pride.

In 1963, Yad Vashem created a program that honors non-Jews who courageously rescued Jews during the Shoah. The Netherlands has close to 6,000 Righteous Among the Nations, the second-highest number after Poland. Until 2011 Jewish rescuers never received recognition like their non-Jewish counterparts. That’s why I’m honored to attend today the only annual event dedicated to commemorating the heroism of Jews who rescued fellow Jews during the Shoah. We often overlook the fact that Jews were active in key underground resistance movements. The Jewish underground not only rescued Jews and other persecuted minorities, but also collaborated with Allied Forces to fight Nazi Germany. These brave resistance fighters secretly slipped in and out of ghettos, smuggled arms and falsified ID papers, all of which resulted in saving precious lives.

Indeed, the full name of today—Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-la G’vurah— includes the word gvurah, heroism. Today, we do not only preserve the memory of the victims of the Shoah, but also honor the heroism—g’vurah—of those who risked everything to save even just one life.

One of the 2021 recipients of the Jewish Rescuers Citation was Henriëtte Pimentel. She saved hundreds of Jewish children as the head of a crèche in Amsterdam.  On April 19 a bridge was named after her in recognition of her brave actions. The bridge was officially revealed by the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema.

The crèche, which was situated opposite of the Hollandsche Schouwburg theatre in Amsterdam where Jewish families awaited transport to concentration camps. Many Jewish parents made the heart-wrenching decision of seeking safety for their children by handing over their children to the creche without knowing if they will ever see them again.  Some 500 to 800 children were smuggled out and brought to safety by Pimentel.

The next speaker of today’s ceremony is Avi Drukker, son of Anna Rosa Van Dam. Anna helped tens of Jewish children and adults finding a place to hide. She was arrested in 1943 by the Nazis and was transported to multiple concentration camps. She was a third-year medical student and was placed serving in the camp’s medical corps, which helped her surviving the Shoah.

The two brave women I’ve just mentioned had something in common—they did everything to protect Jewish children by hiding them, knowing that if they would be caught, they will almost certainly face death. Many underground resistance movements were mixed collaborations of Jews and non-Jews. Let us follow their example and take a firm stance together, Jews and non-Jews alike, against today’s anti-Semitism. By joining forces and supporting each other, we can work to fight it. This we owe to the victims and to future generations."

I’ve just delivered this message to a group of Jewish communal representatives focused on high-level international interreligious dialogue.

This past Shabbat’s Torah reading has special resonance for all those active in interreligious engagement, but also so many simply navigating relationships in a diverse, multireligious world.

The Torah portion, Kedoshim, points to the tension that can be inherent in balancing individual religious commitments and convictions with a broader dedication to humanity and to intercommunal peace—fundamental religious imperatives themselves. In traditional terms, these might be described as mitzvot ben adam la’Makom and mitzvot ben adam lachavero—duties between people and their Maker, and between people and our fellow human beings. In just the opening verses of Kedoshim we have commandments such as those to observe the Sabbath and to reject idolatry. But we also have the commandment “v’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha”—“and you shall love your fellow as yourself”—that is considered not just important but the very essence of Judaism.

The current season on the Jewish calendar is one that highlights the tumultuous history of Jewish relations with other peoples and faith communities. After celebrating on Passover our liberation from foreign bondage during ancient times, Yom Hashoah marks the culmination of two millennia of primarily European Christian anti-Semitism, while Yom Hazikaron memorializes the over 27,000 Jews and Israelis from different backgrounds who have lost their lives over more than a century of conflict, primarily with Muslim Arabs, over the return of Jews to the Land of Israel and to statehood there. And, of course, Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrates the achievement and perseverance of that statehood despite such sustained challenges—an epic event with practical but also real doctrinal implications for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Our hatafara, or prophetic text, this Shabbat seemed to also foretell a time such as ours. In the text customary among Sephardic Jews, Ezekiel has God relating of swearing to the Israelites to take them “to a Land that I had sought out for them, flowing with milk and honey, a splendor for all the lands.” In the text customary among Ashkenazi Jews, Amos has God saying this: “I shall bring back the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild desolate cities, they will return and plant vineyards… I shall implant them upon their Land; they will not be uprooted again from upon their Land that I have given them.”

While we may not yet have reached a utopian era of true harmony and universal acceptance— something borne out in the continued incitement and terrible violence that we have seen again over recent days and weeks—there is genuine cause for hope in progress toward greater mutual understanding, kinship and common purpose in the region.

Twenty years ago, it could not have been taken for granted that Gulf and other Arab states would formalize not only open government-to-government but also broad-based people-to-people relations. The same was true 30 years ago of official diplomatic relations between Israel and the Vatican, bookmarking the very same century of Theodor Herzl’s unsuccessful appeal to Pope Pius X to support his Zionist cause. But this too is by now a well-established reality.

The rebirth of Jewish national sovereignty has bestowed upon Jews not only great blessings but also new responsibilities and new challenges. In the case of a nation-state named Israel, on a small territory known by so many as the Holy Land, these challenges involve not only mundane, worldly matters but questions of religion, religious identity and belief. In this, we can continue to play a distinctive and meaningful role. May we be guided with wisdom to support true peacemaking—and to forging vital new friendships.

Although the figure of Moses appears in a frieze at the Supreme Court and at the House of House of Representatives along with Moses Maimonides, Oscar Straus is still the only Jewish person whose achievements have been honored with a public sculpture in Washington, D.C.

A Bavarian immigrant, Straus was one of three brothers who all impacted American life. Music, poems and even a beautiful park on upper Broadway memorializes the love and devotion of entrepreneur Isidor (b. 1845) and his wife, Ida, who perished together on board the ill-fated Titanic in 1912. The great philanthropist and B’nai B’rith member, Nathan (1848-1931), was a visionary who transformed Macy’s into the world’s greatest retail establishment.

Oscar (1850-1926) followed another path as a diplomat, judge and historian. Committed to Judaism, he believed that his own religion taught that all people have the inherent right to practice their own faith. He protected minority rights as the United States ambassador to Turkey (1887-89 and 1909-10) and lent his support to charities that fought prejudice. As the first Jewish cabinet member, he served as secretary of labor and commerce from 1906-09, a time when many reforms were put into place. Straus was championed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who proudly said, “I want to show Russia and other countries what we think of the Jews…”  

After his death, sufficient funds to build a proposed monument were raised by 1929, but the Depression and World War II would delay its planning and construction for 18 years. At its October 1947 dedication, President Harry S. Truman praised Straus as a “…great man [who] stood for tolerance and reason.”

The tri-part Oscar Straus Memorial Fountain can be seen in its original location at the Federal Triangle near the White House. Rendered in a neoclassic style, old fashioned even at its unveiling, it often goes unnoticed by passersby, despite taking up a large amount of space on the plaza.

Yet even a cursory glance at this work will motivate many to want to understand its underlying meanings. An allegory which reveals Straus’ innate decency and ideals, the memorial’s iconography was directly influenced by “Religious Liberty,” B’nai B’rith’s white marble statue honoring the principles for which Straus, the man, was respected. That sculpture, depicting a female warrior figure and a child or child-like figure, was commissioned and dedicated in Philadelphia, its present home, as the organization’s gift to the nation during the 1876 American centennial celebration.

Mounted on a tiered platform, the striking Straus fountain is inscribed: “To the memory of Oscar Straus Statesman Author Diplomat.”  It’s set between two figurative sculptural groups, designed by the German American bronze artist Alexander Weinman (1870-1952). To one side, the female “Liberty of Worship” gazes upward, perhaps in prayer, personifying the message carved on her pedestal: “Our Liberty of worship is not a concession nor a privilege but an inherent right,” the same sentiment conveyed by B’nai B’rith’s statue, with its female symbol of Freedom of Religion. And, as in Philadelphia, she protects a child—here, holding open a generic “Book of Religion”—who represents faith.  

Across the fountain, “The Voice of Reason” portrays a semi-draped male figure, who is also paired with a child leaning on a hammer, holding a purse and a set of keys. These attributes reference the many agreements between capital and labor that Straus negotiated; the keys may also stand for his ability to “unlock” equitable solutions to problems taking center stage in America at the time. The pedestal inscription is a hefty one: “The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination."

Two embedded bronze plaques at the fountain include information about Oscar Straus and the monument’s history.

The memorial remained on view until 1991, the year it was dismantled and stored until the nearby Ronald Reagan Building was finished in 1998, when The Straus Memorial Fountain was reinstalled in the original site.

In “The American Spirit,” a book containing his speeches and essays, Straus observed: “The spirit that guided the work of the founders of our government was not one that was crushed and screwed into sectarian molds by the decrees of intolerant councils—it recognizes the value of every creed by rising above them all…This is the development of civil as well as religious liberties in the United States.”

Read Eric Fusfield's op-ed in the Jewish Journal.

If one were to draw a straight line between recent controversies involving the Colleyville synagogue attack, Whoopi Goldberg, and Brooklyn College, respectively, one would find a common theme: the negation of Jewish identity.

The attack on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas was “not specifically related to the Jewish community,” an FBI agent said in a press conference afterward, even though the perpetrator’s stated intention had been to communicate with a rabbi in New York whom the attacker fancifully assumed controlled the fate of an imprisoned terrorist.

The Holocaust was not an example of Nazi genocide against the Jews, but rather a mere illustration of “man’s inhumanity to man,” Goldberg said on her talk show, “The View,” notwithstanding Hitler’s well-documented pronouncements about Jewish racial inferiority and his intention to eradicate European Jewry altogether. At Brooklyn College, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has opened an investigation into claims of anti-Semitic harassment, including a warning by an administrator to a Jewish student to “get your whiteness in check.”

​Increasingly, Jewish identity in America is subsumed by notions of “whiteness,” as the lens through which many Americans view race doesn’t allow for a nuanced understanding of Jewish identity. Jews don’t conform to standard definitions of a racial, ethnic, or religious group, so the temptation to characterize all or most of them as white based on skin color is understandable, if problematic.

But the consequences of diminishing Jewish identity and relegating Jews to the white and privileged class, as some of the Brooklyn College aggressors did, have already proven themselves to be serious.  The Colleyville episode showed that it is possible, even though the FBI later walked back the agent’s remark, to dismiss an attack on a Jewish target as an essentially random occurrence.

The Whoopi Goldberg episode demonstrated that, even at a time when some Holocaust survivors are still living, the power of the Holocaust to educate younger generations has been devalued, as the central narrative of anti-Jewish genocide has been undermined. At Brooklyn College, two Jewish students in the graduate Mental Health Counseling program felt compelled to withdraw because of the stress of the harassment they endured on campus.

To see how little regard is paid to Jewish sensibilities with respect to cultural slights, one need look no further than the University of California’s instructional publication, “Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send.” The document provides a list of examples of comments that target individuals based on their memberships in “marginalized groups,” a category that seems not to include Jews or Israel supporters, despite the alarming degree of hostility directed toward Jews on UC campuses in recent years. We learn from UC’s list that the statement “America is a land of opportunity” is a microaggression, while none of the anti-Semitic tropes routinely used to bash Israel and intimidate Jewish students merit a mention.

But the gravest danger posed by the redaction of Jewishness from discussions about marginalized groups is the unsettling public apathy toward an antisemitism that has increasingly turned violent.  In October 2018, the deadliest mass killing of Jews in American history occurred at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Other deadly attacks on Jewish targets have followed.

According to 2019 FBI hate crime statistics, Jews are overwhelmingly the most heavily targeted religious group in the United States. More than 60 percent of hate crimes in that category were directed toward Jewish targets in 2019.  In May 2021 anti-Semitic violence spiked in the wake of clashes between Hamas and Israel.

Antisemitism comes from multiple sources: the far right, the far left, and Islamist extremists. All of these streams of Jew-hatred must be treated with great seriousness. They are all variations of an ancient social illness that has shown a unique ability to persist and adapt to modern circumstances.

The different forms of antisemitism that manifest themselves today find support across political, cultural, and religious lines. The overlap and interconnectedness of these viral hatreds has fed a normalization of antisemitism evidenced in public comments, violent attacks, the bullying of students, and the minimization of the Holocaust.  It is also reflected in the callous indifference of those who claim to protect vulnerable groups but reflexively opt to treat Jews as privileged oppressors, regardless of the vulnerability of Jewish individuals and institutions.

​As we continue to devise and implement strategies to confront antisemitism in the U.S. and abroad, it is important to ask, when did the diminution of Jewish identity become acceptable? When did antisemitism stop being a form of oppression?  When did it become OK to dismiss antisemitism as a distraction from other social or political priorities? Most of all, where are our allies?

The answers may be uncomfortable for some, but for Jews, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

​The Photographers’ Gallery in London continues its retrospective of the iconic work of Helen Levitt through Feb. 22, 2022.
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A crowd has gathered at one spot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art installation of 20th century masterworks of photography. People of all ages, even the children who have been brought to the museum under protest, are spellbound by a modest 20-minute black and white silent documentary filmed on the sidewalks of East Harlem and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. This is a first encounter with Helen Levitt’s “In the Street” (1945-46) for most, who watch unincumbered by the essays and expert interpretative analysis that have contributed to the work’s reputation. Curators, critics and poets have proclaimed Levitt to be one of the era’s greatest artists. What is it about “In the Street” that has the power to capture and transport them so completely? 

Daughter of a Russian Jewish immigrant, Levitt (1913-2009) was raised in Brooklyn, where she attended, but did not complete, high school. Turning to photography in her early 20s, Levitt was influenced throughout her lifetime by the politically charged work of both earlier photographers like Lewis Heine, who depicted the hardened children of Manhattan’s Five Points district, and perhaps Paul Strand, remembered for his early portraits of the city’s street people, as well as dozens of her own contemporaries and colleagues. Ben Shahn’s photos and paintings of children were certainly known to her. Any point of view inherent in her selection of subject matter was tempered by the somewhat detached aesthetic of her mentor, the genius Henri Cartier-Bresson. Her friend, Walker Evans, left a legacy of Depression-era portraits whose static gravitas was rejected by Levitt, known for the kinetic exuberance of her work.

“In the Street,” made in collaboration with cameraperson Janice Loeb and James Agee, the celebrated author who wrote the film’s opening title, could also be viewed through the lens of peripheral sources like Italian Neo-Realist cinema—just being screened in New York during those years—early Soviet newsreels or even some of the experimental short films that attracted audiences to Manhattan’s art cinemas. 

Steeped in the gritty ambiance of New York’s tenement neighborhoods, “In the Street” is almost anthropological in its view of their inhabitants. An unconscious comparison between real life and its Hollywood treatment drives the search for truth. What the camera records—the tired, the elderly dog walkers, the attentive but haggard mothers, the alcoholics and the mentally ill, the men whose faces become roadmaps of their violent pastimes—is the distillation of an experience that is alien to most.

The lingering takeaway involves sequences with children, unkempt and dressed in tattered castoffs, engaged in play. Affectionate or savage, brazen or mysterious, their repartee is one that reveals an intimacy that can develop among those who encounter the same trials and who find release in each other’s company, perhaps mirroring the life Levitt had known during her own youth. 

Maurice Sendak’s brief comment about the photographer and her perspective on the world conveys a lot: “Helen Levitt’s clear-eyed view of children’s street life is sympathetic and brutally honest. She takes children on their own terms and sees the extraordinary paradox of their lives, watching them duck and dive between total fantasy and hard reality.”

Although a large portion of Levitt’s negatives, contact sheets and prints disappeared when her studio was burglarized during the 1970s, it is possible to discern the variety of her methods from existing materials. Sometimes she photographed her subjects clandestinely, at other times they confront the camera to pose for her.

The London exhibit also includes a selection of Levitt’s later work in color, dating from the 1970s, which conveys, according to art historian Julie Hrischeva, “an urban sense of disconnection that … [unlike pictures by Diane Arbus or Garry Winogrand] maintains true affection for her fellow New Yorkers.”