I am not a Holocaust Jew. Though Auschwitz loomed large in my Jewish education, and though as a child I was duly traumatized and outraged by what my teachers described as the inexplicable and unprecedented evil perpetrated against us, it plays only a small role in my current Jewish identity and practice. This is by choice, as I have long regarded our community’s obsession with “what they did to us” as misguided in a number of ways.
Like many of my generation’s so-called “New Jews,” I see the recourse to the Holocaust as a substitute for living Judaism: an ersatz religion whose frisson of spiritual passion ultimately provides only negative reasons to live a Jewish life. As an activist, I am also dubious of how unspeakable tragedy was so readily converted into a platform for pretension, posturing and political exploitation. And as a teacher and writer, I know how easy it is to use the Holocaust as the ultimate cheap shot: the surefire way to get kids’ attention, get your book published and score points for piety when all else fails.
This summer, though, I visited Auschwitz for the first time. No, I was not in the parade of Jewish tourists on the European genocide trail, but since I was studying in Krakow (which, I hasten to point out, is joyful, cultured, vibrant and colorful) for the summer, I felt it was important to go, and so one rainy Sunday I went. So what happens when a “New Jew” goes to Auschwitz? In fact, despite my expectations, the trip underscored rather than undermined my ambivalence.
Standing on the tracks at Birkenau, or in the converted stables where our (great-) grandparents slept, what stood out most was the reality, the immediacy of the place. For decades, I had experienced the Holocaust as history, symbol and myth, but now it was entirely real: This happened here. Arendt’s famous locution, the “banality of evil,” took on new meaning. Over there is the bus stop, and in this room, thousands of people died. There is the train station back to Krakow, and here is the train platform where Jews were sent to the gas chambers.
This was the opposite of how I’d been taught. I’d known the Holocaust as a huge thing that seemed to take place in another world. “Planet Auschwitz, ” as it’s sometimes called, radically evil, unlike anything we can understand. Even at Auschwitz itself, I heard tour guides saying how no one can understand how such a thing was possible.
Really? Walking the expansive grounds, looking at the mounds of hair in cases, it seemed entirely possible to me. In fact, I don’t understand what people don’t understand. The hatred? The fact that people could do this? The meticulousness, the Vorsprung Durch Technik of death? Are we really surprised, after Stalin, Abu Ghraib, the Killing Fields, Rwanda and, yes, even the Jewish state’s own occasional disregard for human life, that people can be exceptionally cruel to other people, even to the point of murdering innocent children? Perhaps not in this degree, but surely we understand the power of ideology and the ways in which some people are turned into automatons and others into animals.
Yes, the scale of Birkenau is bewildering; the place is unbelievably huge. But that’s a difference of degree, not kind — and in its scale not unlike vast malls or industrial parks. In terms of the human capacity for evil, Auschwitz felt all too comprehensible.
This distinction between Planet Auschwitz and the real thing is, I think, why Arendt’s insight is so important. Standing on the actual ground, it was easier to appreciate how this wasn’t done by evil monsters — by George W. Bush’s “evildoers,” or by the cartoon Nazis we see in movies. This was done by regular people, to regular people, and this is what regular people can do. You and I could do it, I think. At least I could, given the right training, community, education and motivation.
Maybe it’s more comfortable for the bad guys to always wear swastikas and be monsters, but that’s not the reality — and it teaches the wrong lesson. So long as we perpetuate these stories about the Holocaust being unprecedented, inexplicable, incomprehensible and so on, we perpetuate its unreality, and its concomitant irrelevance to everyday political choices and personal decisions, like how cold or “tough” we ought to be when people are suffering, how much trust we place in authority and how often we second-guess that which we know to be true.
This relates to the second lesson I learned at Auschwitz: that it’s so tempting to misuse. There are at least two major ways to relate to the Holocaust: as something that “they” did to us (Jews, that is), or as something that people did to people. If it’s the former, then the right response is more heart hardening by, and more power to, the Jews. If the latter, then we are all called upon to consider our actions in light of it.
I already have suggested that the latter is my own view — although of course I understand that the Holocaust is both universal and particular, and the last thing I want to do is oversimplify something that is endlessly oversimplified. My point, rather, has to do with my own behavior at Auschwitz, and how I noticed some of the very ethnocentric tendencies in myself that I decry in others.
For example, it’s well known that Poland’s relationship to the Holocaust is complex. Whereas many Jews regard Poles as accomplices, most Poles regard themselves as victims, and present themselves that way in the Auschwitz museum. (From the museum, one would think that as many Gentile Poles died at Auschwitz as Jews; in fact, almost 10 times as many Jews died as Poles — not that 150,000 Poles is a small number.) Scanning the walls of photographs of Polish victims for a single Jewish name, I noticed that I felt offended, as if “they” had co-opted “our” tragedy and evaded responsibility for it.
But then I thought some more. Who are the “us” and “them” here, anyway? Is this something the Germans did to the Jews? Is it what the Nazis did to the Jews, Poles, Roma, homosexuals, communists and Soviets? Maybe it’s something people did to people? Most important, what was the source of my offense? What was it that I wanted, exactly?
Traipsing around Auschwitz in my yarmulke, the answer was clear: privilege. This is mine, I thought. Look at me — the Jew, in my yarmulke. This happened to us. And of course, this is why I am special. I guess we’re still the Chosen People after all. Not that anyone would choose this kind of chosenness.
But then again, maybe some people would. Maybe I would — and did.
And that is precisely the problem. By owning this big, evil, terrible thing, we victims get this sense of entitlement, power, ownership and enlargement. Our suffering becomes like a prize. It generates ethical imperatives, it lets us make solemn speeches about moral issues and, for some, it provides the final go-to point in any political argument about Israel. It’s the ultimate ace in the hole, the ringer, the closer — and many in our community don’t hesitate to call its number, just like some politicians remind us of 9/11 whenever they want to take away another freedom.
All this has long felt wrong to me, but at Auschwitz I saw how tempting, how natural it was. The ego wants to possess things, even terrible things, if it thinks they’ll make it bigger and better. Yet surely, whatever the Holocaust teaches us, it should not be that some people are better than others.
In other words, I came away with even more ambivalence about how we in the Jewish community teach about, relate to and otherwise use the Holocaust — precisely because I found myself acting in similar ways. As I’ve written elsewhere, the Holocaust of Jewish political/social discourse is practically its own pseudo-religion (“Holocaustism,” perhaps) with its own myths, moral authority and magical power, and surely Auschwitz is its cathedral. I have long thought that this pseudo-religion is greatly to our detriment as a living culture and meaningful religious community — but standing on its sacred site, I found it divorced from reality, as well.
In the weeks since I’ve returned, I can’t get Auschwitz out of my mind: the gas chambers, the latrines, the barbed-wire fences. But not because any of these was unreal or unbelievable, and not because this was done by monsters to saints. On the contrary — because it was entirely real, entirely believable and entirely the work of human beings like you and me. That reality seems to me far more powerful, and terrifying, than any fantasy or dream.
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Mark, this article brought back so many memories of our time on the March in 2005. I look back and feel that Auschwitz and Birkenau almost felt sanitized and cleaned up. It was Majdanek that hit me full force in the gut. Smelling the shoes and being able to touch them through the mesh was overwhelming for me. The huge pile of ashes in the mausoleum at the end of the walk through the camp was much more painful than seeing the crematoriums in the former camps. When nightmares are to be experienced, Majdanek goes to the top of the list as it was a living bad dream. Having Lublin reaching right up to the edge of the camp really blew me away, as the citizens of that city had to know what was happening. It was one overwhelming trip and it is one I have no desire to repeat
Jay,
I can't believe how often you're right. How to recognize, observe, and react to the Shoah and yet not allow it to dominate. This is the quandary we face as modern Jews.
I have far too often seen the dominance of the Shoah, its dogmatic pull to centrality of identity.
I rather like the conclusion of the article.
The Shoah with Auschwitz as its dominant paradigm is both impossible, and immoral, to forget. Yet, how we integrate it into our lives becomes the issue. I have reason to believe that as time separates us from the historical time of the Shoah, its pull will become more universal.
And to a certain extent the memory of Auschwitz will become broadly ethical. This is for the good. And if as Jews, New or otherwise, we can use that place to bring us into the world as stronger moral agents, that will be not only for the good, what but, I think, time necessitates.
I am immediately put off by your beginning statement that you are not a "Holocaust Jew." How, then, do you presume to speak to and about "them"? Or are you only speaking to your fellow "New Jews" about "them"? What sort of privileges accrue to being a "New Jew" rather than a "Holocaust Jew"?
You have a few interesting insights in your article,but it is outrageous that any of your insights about Auschwitz include that Jews (perhaps only the "Holocaust Jews," perhaps only the readers of the Yiddish Forward) are using their victimhood as an ego-gratifying privilege.
It is easy to stand in silence (and safety) on a site of a hell where murders and sadistic tortures were so commonplace and presume to understand and draw conclusions. Perhaps the immediacy of a chronic, unrelenting, life-threatening danger might provide a real insight, but I wouldn't wish such a thing even on the privileged.
Your current article reeks of condescension. The joyful, colorful city of Cracow is probably full of "New Jews" these days and Poles celebrating the Jews of yore. What it lacks are the Jews, ordinary Jews, who used to live there. So Cracow's Kazimierz is the real Cathedral of "Love" for the "New" Jews and the "New" Poles.
The earlier version of this article had a picture of Jay Michaelson (I presume). Currently, someone at the English Forward --perhaps Mr. Michaelson, perhaps an editor exercising his cleverness-- replaced the picture of the man with the image of the Lego Auschwitz (above) which had been prominently featured --and raised controversy when it was -- in the Too Jewish exhibit at the Jewish Museum some years ago. Was the selection of the Lego Auschwitz photo made in ignorance of that earlier controversy, or was it deliberately chosen "af tsu lehakhis" to raise that controversy again in the context of Michaelson's article.
In the meantime, Mr. Michaelson, a "New" Jew, seems to have succeeded in writing an article about Auschwitz that excuses the perpetrators and bystanders as merely ordinary people (anyone could have done the same) but accuses those "Holocaust" Jews of exploiting their victimhood to gain some sort of privilege.
I certainly hope this guy is not an example of what he calls a "new Jew". I doubt he is representative of most young Jews. He unfortunately sounds to me like an arrogant supercilious sophomoric "progressive". As such he of course equates the Holocaust with slaughter of other peoples (and even Abu Ghraib). But comparing the Holocaust to, "even the Jewish state’s own occasional disregard for human life" is truly obscene. What is particularly striking is his apparent lack of depth of feeling for our people. In his self-absorption he felt what he "wanted" was "privilege". It was painful to read, and I wish he had not presumed to share his lack of depth, intelligence, understanding, compassion and pain with the rest of us. But perhaps he can be an object lesson to others on the banal danger posed by the "new" progressive "universalistic" Jew. Is the "new" Jew, who sees "recourse" to the Holocaust as a "ersatz religion", someone who can be counted to stand up and say on behalf of Jews, as is now again needed, "Never again"?
this is sad pseudo drivel that makes me worry that if this is the best the forward can do then it may as well shut up shop. you sound like you need a spot of therapy jay.
Whata pretentious pile of garbage from a "self hating Jew"...utter nonsense...and all I can say is speak for yourself because you most certainly do not speak for the rest of us...
The "new" Jew is not destined for longevity, between assimilation, egomania and a profound & desperate desire to be accepted by their fellow pseudo-intelligentisa, and the non-jewish left, they will sadly be gone in a generation ...
Just look at those snarky, cool "new jews" at Heeb who have a published a pictorial of a crude Jewish comedienne dressed like Hitler baking burnt Jew cookies...
The "New Jews" of the Forward, J-Street, New Voices etc... are tired of the Holocaust, Israel and Zionism, and, well, Judaism - unless they rebrand it into some proto-leftist gibberish that's about gay rights or eco-something that will somehow will not be rejected by their leftist academic and social peers...
The "new Jews" will fade away into oblivion when they lose any traces of Judaism which they currently exploit as their shoebox to hypercriticize Israel etc...
Then they'll become the "former Jews"
What could be said about this article - sublime ignorance comes to mind. I would suggest Michaelson spends some time with a holocaust survivor to understand that the Holocaust is not some pop icon, not an exercise in comparative politics, not a platform for superficial intellectual pretensions. I would also suggest that Michaelson read Klemperer's published diaries, perhaps a few volumes of the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, the "Black Book" and "Nazism: An Assault on Civilization", which would provide him with a historical grounding rather than just having the philosophical musings of Hannah Arendt. Judaism is not the 3-4 generation american experience, but a rich cultural and philosophical body binding Jews globally, that evolved over several thousand years. This was abruptly cut and almost completely destroyed by the Holocaust, in a very planned fashion. Michaelson's "New" Jew has nothing to do with being a Jew - I would call it the "Ersatz" Jew or "Strohdumm" Jew
Thank you so much Jay. You voice so much of what I've felt over the years. I have stayed away from establishment Judaism for years at a time, because it has seem to me that we have begun to worship our own perceived victim status. This has made me feel ill. As a woman and a Jew I *cannot afford to see myself as a victim.* That false self-perception allows me to continue to be abused (because I've adopted that role) AND to abuse others. Dragging through life in this sordid way is an insult to all those who did die in the Holocaust.
I too grew up with older, Holocaust survivor relatives, and the horror of what happened to us is real to me. But that same horror - calculated genocide - has happened in Ruwanda, former Yugoslavia etc. and IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING in the SUDAN. If we don't recognize and own our own part in all this as HUMANS, then we continue to perpetuate that which we say we will 'never forget.' Thank you again, b'shalom from San Francisco.
Jay, I agree with much of your article but I am chagrined and put off by your inclusion of "even the Jewish state’s own occasional disregard for human life" in a list of horrors and annihilating tyrants. It is shocking that you have bought into the fashionable habit of hating Israel so much that you are willing to lump it in with Stalin and Rwanda. How obscene....how revolting....how sad. Think about this, Jay. How many of the victims of the Holocaust would agree with your sentiments? And how many would find your comparison truly revolting? Answers: Very few, and very many.
A very fine article, and long overdue.
Jay Michaelson is saying, I think, that he is not a victim, that he has not earned victimhood, and that he will not borrow the terrible merit of the real victims. When he says that any of us is capable of inflicting savage and calculated cruelties on others, he is right. But being capable of actions, on the one hand, and performing them, on the other hand, is the difference between a monster and a human. We are human by virtue of inhibition. What is both unbelievable and undeniable about the holocaust is that a whole people, a whole nation, a whole society lacked that essential inhibition.
one of the greatest achievements for "new Jews" is to go back to their zekester and heebster buddies and relish in the glow of being called a self-hater by those pesky old style traditional establishment jews - the ones all the snark is directed at - like the old couple who saves enough money to give their children a jewish education and to manage to also donate some money to israel -- you know the kind the hipsters love to make fun of -- like my grandparents --- i only wish I can have a fraction of their goodness as i get older...
Were does our understanding our capacity for kindness and cruelty come form, our social good and evil?
The word nations, actually represents the inner attributes and character traits of our individual self. The nation of Amalek refers to the doubt and uncertainty that dwells within us when we face hardship and obstacles. Moab represents the dual nature of man. Nefilim refers to the sparks of Light that we have defiled through our impure actions, and to the negative forces that lurk within the human soul as a result of our own wrongful deeds.
It is written..... This is the portion of Judah, this is the portion of Benjamin, ect....
Was it not said that the Holy One ....He said, 'What shall I do? This calls for occupation. Something is needed to bring here and draw near him. I shall give him sonething to be occupied with, so he will leave My children. Let us find someone for him to be busy with'. \ Make note.....For He said,...."Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on earth?"
Did not our G-D say.....Does Job fear Elohim for naught?"
This is likened to a shepherd who wanted to pass his flock across a river. A wolf passed by and afflicted his flock. The wise shepherd said, what shall I so? He might destroy the flock while I move the lambs across. He raised his eyes and saw a wild goat, big and strong. He said, I shall throw him before the wolf. While they do battle with each other, I shall remove all the flock and they shall be saved from him.
Make note.....So did not the Holy One , say.....'I shall certainly throw a great, powerful and forceful goat in his way, NAMELY JOB.
Many of us are saved becouse of the great powerful and forceful goat, that G-D put before the evil of the world to do battle with. While he was busy with him, he left Yisrael alone, and uttered no denouncement on them.
For it is written..... Isaiah 40....Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting G-D the Creator of the ends of the earth. he will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom.
We MO Jews revel in our victimhood, and justify the worst kind of behavior in its name. We refuse to admit that other groups could have suffered from bigotry and genocide--we cling to our uniqueness as the world's most hated and reviled group and wear it like a badge of honor. Worst of all; it substitutes for true "yiras shamayim" fear of G-d. And here is the real irony: actual survivors who experienced the worst know the truth of Michaelson's thesis. Their tormenters were ordinary men and women who were infected with the Nazi ideology, brought about after centuries of demonization by European mythology, but still just ordinary people. In general, survivors do not wear the badge of victimhood. It is those who escaped the holocaust who now are its most agressive and vengeful "victims". It is our new religion.
The "new" Jew is not destined for longevity, between assimilation, egomania and a profound & desperate desire to be accepted by their fellow pseudo-intelligentisa, and the non-jewish left, they will sadly be gone in a generation ...
Just look at those snarky, cool "new jews" at Heeb who have a published a pictorial of a crude Jewish comedienne dressed like Hitler baking burnt Jew cookies...
The "New Jews" of the Forward, J-Street, New Voices etc... are tired of the Holocaust, Israel and Zionism, and, well, Judaism - unless they rebrand it into some proto-leftist gibberish that's about gay rights or eco-something that will somehow will not be rejected by their leftist academic and social peers...
The "new Jews" will fade away into oblivion when they lose any traces of Judaism which they currently exploit as their shoebox to hypercriticize Israel etc...
Then they'll become the "former Jews"
The New Jew-s-------United, with One G-D. A new beginning in the world by being complete in all. It is true that Jacob was also complete and in him the tree was completed below after the pattern above. Make note of Jer. 31:27.
The ones "who can't afford to be victims" are obviously pleased wit the tone and focus of this article, but to me "whistling past the cemetery" and erasing the uniqueness of the Shoah as just one of many horrors perpetrated upon humanity by other human beings diminishes OUR tragedy. Maybe that's what the author really intended, after all he is enjoying the fun city of Cracow where gentiles (having learned Yiddish by rote) perform plays by Sholem Aleikhem. Where are the Jews? (The Poles are still there.) Does he hear the haunting voices of the actors who used to speak, curse, recite, play and heckle the actors in Yiddish? And to compare, even just tangentially, horrendous Nazi acts against passive Jews who have done them no harm to Israel's treatment of their implacable enemies is absolutely scandalous, especially in a "Jewish" publication. Is this what is meant by the "new" Jew? No, my friends, real Jews understand the depth of Nazi horror and the meaning of the loss from which we are yet to recover. It's no yikhes, but what other people have suffered as grievously? Same as the others, you say? Just people, right? As he continues to explore his "New" Jewishness, he seems to be moving further and further away from what it means to be a Jew. Pity.
A true Jew, has recovered and understand the depth of the pit,and the horror sin brings upon any group of people even them selves, sin brings death, and death from sin comes in many forms. We can live in torment for years, before death comes.
We are all out of the garden, we are like a beggar at the gate the door, were the angel with the fire seord will not let us pass, due to sin.
Put self pity out and thank G-D for the day that you may use it to turn, and walk before your G-D blamless. One sin is not greater than an other---sin brings death to all!
In Psalm....it is written...that the providence presiding over David's inheritance that will ensure it for him and will execute vengeance on his behalf.. There is a teaching that G-D the Holy One, prepared for David a Holy Chariot, adorned with the holy superior crowns of the Patriarchs. Abraham Isaac and Jacob That remained and inheritance for David and his kingdom ws reserved in perpetuity for his descendants. This kingdom had its counterpart on high, and fortified by that heavenly kingdom the rulership of the House of David will never depart from it throughout all generations. So that whenever the crown of Kingship in any way bestirs itself for a descendant of David there is no one who can stand up against him. The reason is why "Daniel alone saw the vision" Dan.10:7 He was a descendant of David ....for it is written "Now aming these were, of the children of Judah, Daniel , Hananiah:, etc. Daniel saw the vision and rejoiced in that it was of the side of the inherited possission which was the lot and portion of his fathers; it was his own, and so he could endure it, whereas others could not.;
I never heard of this writer until I came upon his horrific recent article "How I’m Losing My Love For Israel", which I'm forwarding to many friends as a symptom of the danger we face from within. I then looked to see what else he had written and found this disturbing piece of crap. The cold dismissiveness towards "Holocaust Jews" and "the parade of Jewish tourists on the European genocide trail" was the first offense. Could the obligatory hard left blaming of George Bush be far behind, even in a piece on the Holocaust? Of course not - nor his denigration of the fact that there really ARE evil-doers. If this is what a "new Jew" is, we are sunk. He is as transparent example as I can imagine of a Jew whose "religion" is morphed into liberal politics. It would be riotous if it were not so pathetic - that he probably considers himself to be something like "intellectually liberated" - and yet he mouthes this specious doctrinaire pablum. "The ego wants to possess things, even terrible things, if it thinks they’ll make it bigger and better. Yet surely, whatever the Holocaust teaches us, it should not be that some people are better than others. In other words, I came away with even more ambivalence about how we in the Jewish community teach about, relate to and otherwise use the Holocaust — precisely because I found myself acting in similar ways". What garbage!!! I walked those same grounds 2 years ago. My first reaction - awe. The enormity of the horror struck me deaf, dumb and intellectually paralyzed. This guy was thinking about George Bush. Robert Frost famously said that a liberal is someone who would not take his own side in a fight. I wonder how he would refer to a Jew who has THIS putrid reaction to standing on the spot where a million Jews were killed. Here's my try - perverse and nauseating.