January 23, 2024

Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, 245,000 Jewish survivors are still alive

Almost 80 years after the Holocaust, about 245,000 Jewish survivors are still living across more than 90 countries, a new report revealed Tuesday.

Nearly half of them, or 49%, are living in Israel; 18% are in Western Europe, 16% in the United States, and 12% in countries of the former Soviet Union, according to a study by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.

Before the publication of the demographic report, there were only vague estimates about how many Holocaust survivors are still alive.

Their numbers are quickly dwindling, as most are very old and often of frail health, with a median age of 86. Twenty percent of survivors are older than 90, and more women (61%) than men (39%) are still alive.

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January 7, 2024

(JEWISH GROUP) What have you read?

Out of curiosity, what books have y'all read regarding Jews? It can include books about Israel, Zionism, anti-Semitism, culture, language, history, or anything related to the Jewish experience. Here's what I have read in the past year (a few may have been 2022).

Anti-Semitism
The Bloody Story of Anti-Semitism Down the Ages by Joseph McCabe
Anti-Semitism: A Disease of the Mind by Theodore Isaac Rubin
Christian Supremacy: Reckoning with the Roots of Antisemitism and Racism by Magda Teter
Protocols: Exposing Modern Anti-semitism by Elder of Ziyon
The Jewish Choice: Unity or Anti-Semitism: Historical Facts on Anti-Semitism as a Reflection of Jewish Social Discord by Michael Laitman
Contemporary Left Antisemitism by David Hirsh
Anti-Judaism : The Western Tradition by David Nirenberg
It Could Happen Here: Why America Is Tipping from Hate to the Unthinkable - and How We Can Stop It by Jonathan Greenblatt
Antisemitism: What It Is. What It Isn't. Why It Matters by Julia Neuberger
The Chosen Wars by Steven R. Weisman
The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Antisemitism: The Oldest Hatred by John Mann
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss
Antisemitism: Here and Now by Deborah E. Lipstadt
Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories by Mike Rothschild

Israel
Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby
Reclaiming Israel’s History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace by David Brog
Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis

Judaism
3,000 Years of Judaism in 30 Days: Understanding Jewish History, Beliefs, and Practices by Howard N. Lupovitch
Mystical Tradition: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Luke Timothy Johnson
Maimonides and Medieval Jewish Philosophy by Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
Judaism by Dr. Geoffrey Wigoder
Great World Religions: Judaism by Isaiah M. Gafni

Language
Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods by Michael Wex
Yiddish: A Nation of Words by Miriam Weinstein

The Shoah (Holocaust)
The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland
Killing Queers: The Nazi Extermination of Gay Men by Helmut Rohn (touches on the Jewish experience)
Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust by Doreen Rappaport
The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War by David Nasaw (READ THIS!)
Our Crime Was Being Jewish: Hundreds of Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories by Anthony S. Pitch
The Last Jew of Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory, 1942-1943 by Chil Rajchman
The Holocaust: A New History by Laurence Rees
The History of the Holocaust by Howard N. Lupovitch
Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin by Frank Heibert

Culture
Unfinished People: Eastern European Jews Encounter America by Ruth Gay
Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero by Danny Fingeroth
Jewish Comedy: A Serious History by Jeremy Dauber
All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business by Mel Brooks
Superman Is Jewish?: How Comic Book Superheroes Came to Serve Truth, Justice, and the Jewish-American Way by Harry Brod

Other
Denying History: Holocaust Denial, Pseudohistory, and How We Know What Happened in the Past by Michael Brant Shermer
Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow (Read this, then...)
The Minuteman by Greg Donahue
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (fiction)

MUST READ
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn
Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel

What have you read? What do you recommend?

January 5, 2024

I didn't understand Holocaust denial until Oct. 7

“They ask me to speak in the schools,” my grandmother Manya told me over meringues as we sat in her mirrored dining room. “But who will believe me?”

Her question was figurative. Who would believe that this matronly, big-haired woman with a red lipsticked smile had endured forced labor in a work camp in Poland, dug mass graves and buried still-moving bodies with bloody earth, escaped the burning camp through a crevice in her barrack’s roof, and spent a year hiding underground in a hole so small that if one of the four there wanted to turn, they all had to turn?

My grandmother’s question was also literal. Who would believe that she had survived the Holocaust when it was just denied by an antisemitic head of state and by a tenured university professor down the street?

When I had this conversation with my grandmother in 2009, her fears of denial seemed unfounded. Yes, there were Holocaust deniers, but they were outliers. Besides, a logical solution to denial seemed to be more education. With enough proof, I thought, the skeptics my grandmother feared so deeply would have to acknowledge the truth. Amid so much evidence, how could anyone have the gall to deny?

Now, in the aftermath of Oct. 7, I finally get it. My grandmother was not paranoid; her cynicism was exactly right. No proof of Jewish suffering will ever be enough to quash denial — so perhaps, it’s time we stop trying to explain ourselves.

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November 6, 2023

Special report: What's it really like to be Jewish on campus right now?

Four weeks into the Israel-Hamas war, a separate pernicious conflict is roiling American college campuses. Photos, clockwise from upper left, at U.C. Berkeley (by Kimberly Winston); U. Chicago (Debra Nussbaum Cohen); U. Michigan (Debrah Miszak); Harvard (Mira Fox); Columbia (Camillo Barone); Tulane (Leah Jablo); and USC (Louis Keene). Graphic by Matthew Litman

At the University of Chicago, a Jewish senior has stopped crossing the quad to get to her classes, going the long way around to avoid seeing slogans like “Zionist Freakshow Off Our Campus” and “Gaza is a Concentration Camp.”

The student head of Hillel at the University of Michigan, meanwhile, has been so consumed with the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war that she has had to ask for extensions on assignments — in some cases from faculty members who signed a letter condemning the school’s president for ignoring the plight of Palestinians after the Oct. 7 terror attack.

And at Rutgers University in New Jersey, the Israeli-American leader of a group called Peace is Possible is newly alienated from his Palestinian co-president.

The war “has made us argue in a way we hadn’t before,” said Or Doni, 20, a biology and neuroscience major. “He sent me a very long message a few days ago, talking about how he’s upset about things I’ve said, and how I’ve said them.”

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October 27, 2023

Five Years ago: The Tree of Life Synagogue became a crime scene with the bodies of 11 Jews.

Today, we honor the memory of the people who lost their lives — Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax, Irving Younger.



Say their names!

October 26, 2023

Signs showing a Star of David in a trash can are suddenly everywhere. Hamas used the image 10 years ago

Signs showing a Star of David in the trash are commonplace at pro-Palestinian protests. They’re a new iteration of a similar anti-Nazi sign. Courtesy of Getty (swastika); ADL (Star of David)

Photos of pro-Palestinian protesters holding signs with a Star of David in a trash can and the words, “Keep the world clean,” are becoming commonplace at rallies and on social media.

The images, often crudely drawn on handmade posters, seem organic. But “it appears that Hamas has been using some type of this image for at least 10 years,” according to Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. The image has taken on a new life since Hamas carried out the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, followed by Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

Online searches easily turn up many instances of the anti-Israel signs and slogans at pro-Palestinian protests in places ranging from Sarajevo and Madrid to Missouri and Idaho.

The most widely shared instance was a photo of a young Norwegian woman, Marie Andersen, who made headlines holding the trash can sign with the Star of David, smiling and exultant, during a pro-Palestinian protest in Warsaw, where she is a medical student. Poland’s president, deputy foreign minister and Warsaw’s mayor all condemned the display as a violation of anti-hate laws. Andersen defended the sign in an interview on Norwegian TV, saying that it showed “how dirty I think the Israeli government is, both in this warfare, but also by running an apartheid state for decades.” She added that the poster was “not aimed at Jews” and that she was sorry the sign had “undermined the pro-Palestinian movement.”

https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1717248176854294907

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October 26, 2023

As campus tensions over Israel flare, White House decries 'grotesque sentiments' against Jewish students

As Jewish students studied inside the Cooper Union library, a pro-Palestinian protest formed on the other side of the glass. One student who was inside said the action was “targeted.” Courtesy of Abigail Mottahedeh

The day after several Jewish students at Cooper Union were told to hide as pro-Palestinian protesters banged on the doors of the school library, the White House issued a statement decrying the rise of antisemitic rhetoric on college campuses.

“Amidst the rise in poisonous, antisemitic rhetoric and hate crimes that President Biden has fought against for years, there is an extremely disturbing pattern of antisemitic messages being conveyed on college campuses,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in the statement.

“Just over the past week, we’ve seen protests and statements on college campuses that call for the annihilation of the state of Israel; for genocide against the Jewish people. Jewish students have even had to barricade themselves inside buildings. These grotesque sentiments and actions shock the conscience and turn the stomach.”

The statement tied the current campus turmoil to the Holocaust, and characterized protesters’ anti-Zionism as antisemitism. “They also recall our commitment that can’t be forgotten: ‘never again,’” Bates continued. “Delegitimizing the State of Israel while praising the Hamas terrorist murderers who burned innocent people alive, or targeting Jewish students, is the definition of unacceptable – and the definition of antisemitism.”

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October 24, 2023

Opinion American Jews Won't Abandon the Left. Will It Abandon Us?

In the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967, many American Jews grappled with a challenge that the Talmudic scholar Hillel had posed 1,900 years earlier: “If I am not for myself, who will be? … If I am only for myself, what am I?”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jewish lay and religious leaders commonly invoked that famous philosophical question from synagogue bimahs, at political conferences and in newspaper editorials. They had been shocked at their apparent abandonment by many American liberals — particularly liberal Christians — who voiced greater concern and affinity for hostile Arab countries than for the state of Israel. The whiplash from this abandonment led many American Jews to reevaluate their political allegiances. Could they stand up for themselves, even if doing so meant breaking with former allies, and still stay true to their liberal values?

It’s that same feeling of abandonment that many American Jews, particularly the community’s majority of political liberals, are struggling with today. In the two weeks since Hamas unleashed a brutal attack against Jewish and non-Jewish Israelis — a modern-day pogrom that included rape, the murder of babies, the kidnapping of young and old civilians by the hundreds and gangland executions of innocents — many American Jews are writhing in anger at self-styled progressives who strike them as wholly insensitive to Jewish suffering and trigger-happy not just to decry Israel’s military response but to deny its very right to exist.

“I am in such a state of despair,” said Nick Melvoin, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board and current candidate for Congress. “In my generation, we have been warned how quickly people would turn on us and we just thought no way.” A rabbi and progressive activist in LA put the matter in sharper relief when she observed that the “clear message from many in the world, especially from our world — those who claim to care the most about justice and human dignity — is that these Israeli victims somehow deserved this terrible fate.”

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October 21, 2023

Who is Hamas?

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli civilians in southern towns and communities bordering the Gaza Strip, in what was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel quickly declared war against the Gaza-based terrorist organization. With wars between Hamas and Israel breaking out every few years, one has to wonder...what is Hamas and how did it arise as the sole power governing Gaza today?


(I think this is the correct forum. I am unsure where videos are supposed to go.)

October 19, 2023

I'm a gay Black Jew, and I feel abandoned by the allies I've supported for years

When you’re living at the front lines of intersectionality like I do as a gay Black Jew, you learn early on that no one is coming to your rescue. This is how I feel about Israel right now. While the last two horrible weeks have included some commendable allyship, they have also revealed a level of indifference and disbelief to Jewish pain that extends beyond my darkest nightmares.

From mass anti-Zionist protests to relentless antisemitic social media posts, folks that Jews have championed during their gravest hours have turned their backs on us with soul-crushing ease.

It’s not everyone, of course; numerous levelheaded leaders from every sector have shown up —- heroes like Floyd Mayweather, the former professional boxer who brought a private jet worth of supplies for the Israeli military on Sunday, and Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who proclaimed Oct. 7 another day that will “live in infamy” and denounced the Democratic Socialists of America for indoctrinating young people against Israel.

But they are overshadowed by disappointment — disappointment that has me questioning the value of humanity and left me barely able to sleep — from those I’d hoped would be on my side when the unthinkable happens. And the unthinkable has clearly taken place.

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