Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>,
Speaker 1 00:00:10 This is CLC Klein lav, and I'm a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. The date is Monday, November 30th, and you are listening to for heaven sake, the podcast of the institutes I engage program and each edition for heaven's sake, the Neil Hartman president of the Institute and myself we'll be discussing an issue is central to Israel and to the Jewish world. And then the latter Stein Hain director of the Hartman faculty in North America. We'll explore with us how classical Jewish texts can enrich our understanding of the issue. The Hartman Institute, we approach the Israel conversation. As we do all our conversations from a perspective of Jewish values, seeking broad and deep engagement. Our intention is to encourage a respectful conversation across political lines, promoting mutual understanding and strengthening Jewish people. Hot topic today is the future of Holocaust memory. The memory of the Holocaust transitions from open <inaudible> scar, what are the lessons that we carry as a people?
Speaker 1 00:01:21 What is the necessary balance between the particular its Jewish lessons of national sovereignty and self-defense and the more universal lessons of tolerance and anti-racism for the Jewish people increasingly divided along religious and political lines. Is it even realistic to expect the Holocaust to continue to unite us? These questions have been given added urgency recently by prime minister Netanyahu, his nomination of Brigadier general, FEA Tom, as the next head of the opera sham Israel's national Memorial research and educational center on the Holocaust I town has in the past called for the expulsion of Palestinians in the West bank and has been accused of authorizing war crimes. What does it mean to you as an Israeli, as a Jew that the prime minister of Israel would nominate a man with FEA Tom's problematic past to head? Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:02:20 Two parts. When I think about that question, what does it mean to me? And what is the nature of the discourse in Israel about it mean to be? And I think they're both very important. I think the first is that this is the culmination of a core Zionist and Israeli perception that the Holocaust is not just something that happened to Jews. It's ours, it's ours. It has nothing to do with the world. It's our private story that we want the world to stand at attention. But what we basically want them to do is to recognize their guilt in our, and it's our story. This is my morning. It's my suffering. You did it to me and I want you to remember it, but it's my story. And it doesn't even have a complicated, never again, dimension to it because I don't want the world to commit to never again, in Israel of the answer to never, again, it's not the world's recognizing of its sins and overcoming its antisemitism, Israel and Zionism through its power is the never again.
Speaker 2 00:03:29 And that's why FAA come to general. It's perfect. It's my story. He's my never again. And this is what it means, but uh, how do I feel about it? It's it's just, it's just remarkable to me how <inaudible>, how isolated, how non thoughtful of all the people in Israel. Okay. He's a good general. He's a good manager. What, we don't have another one, the world in our Holocaust, the world disappears, and it's just owned by us completely. And the lack of serious debate in Israel over this is also part of what's shocking to me. A lot of the debate is happening outside of Israel. There's very, very little debate taking place within Israeli society about this.
Speaker 1 00:04:15 Well, I don't know how much the public has paid attention. You know, we're, we're so overwhelmed with problems and controversies and scandals. I don't think the public has the psychic space for one more scandal. And the truth is blue and white is, uh, putting a break at least temporarily on the appointment. So it's been frozen. That's the good news, but I think you've really touched on something very deep here, which is that you, the world did this to us. We owe you nothing. We certainly will not allow you to appropriate our Holocaust for universal values. The Holocaust is about Jewish self protection, Jewish sovereignty, and here's a general, a Brigadier general. Who's also a war hero. And don't talk to me about war crimes. Okay. You know, people do things in the heat of battle. They do things which they later regret, but he's one of ours. We're proud of him. And he is the new Jew. And you know, this flies in the face of Yampa Sharon's own maturation because the outer sham is map that institution anymore. It was that institution maybe 50 years ago today you have a sham embraces the universal aspects of the Holocaust. It embraces the lessons of tolerance and anti-racism, but it insists on the primacy of Jewish self-defense and of Salford D as the main takeaways of the Holocaust. And I think that that's a precious balance that you have Russia has managed to maintain.
Speaker 2 00:05:50 Let you see, I think here you added another really important dimension into the conversation, and that is the versus particular as dimension of the Holocaust. I think in the Israeli story, there is a Universalist notion. I want to teach the world that they're guilty, you're guilty. And I want to tell you, the only at the doubt is our power. We actually think that this is the way universalize it. Now add to it another feature, which is really, really important. And this is where it gets even more complicated, very, very deep in Israeli discourse. The Holocaust is one of a kind non comparable to anything. So in Israeli culture, you're never allowed to say, Oh, he's acting Holocaust. Like he's acting Nazi. Like if you do that, Oh my God, there's no such thing. There's no comparison. Now it's really interesting. Each side does that when it's applied to them, but they're willing to apply it.
Speaker 2 00:06:57 So part of the story also about FEA time is that while there were moral failings, there were relevant to the Holocaust because the Holocaust is this unique, evil, it's unique Bolton its proportions, it's unique and the depravity and it's unique at who it was addressed towards. And again, this is a byproduct of Israel being a closed community, feeling very often under attack that their universalism of the Holocaust is I want to teach the world how bad they were. That's the universal message of the Holocaust. You were evil and I'm never going to let you be evil. Again, it has nothing to do with universalizing acid universalizing, the potential of evil or allowing the Holocaust and its evil to be applied to other things so that we could learn from it.
Speaker 1 00:07:46 We also know that in recent years, the uniqueness of Holocaust has been under relentless assault. We're seeing the hub customer relativized and trivialized and universalized.
Speaker 2 00:07:59 You see, you just added the word trivialized that you made a judgment. Maybe the universalization of the Holocaust is one of the most important things about the Holocaust. I'll give you
Speaker 1 00:08:07 An example of how universalization becomes a trivialization. There was a very important debate during the Trump years over the detention centers for illegal immigrants that the administration was establishing along. The Mexican border and terrible crimes were committed. Their children were separated from parents. Hundreds of children were simply lost to their parents, but then the Holocaust slipped in. These are not just detention camps. These are concentration camps. No, we don't mean Auschwitz. Exactly, but not every concentration camp was a death camp. Suddenly everybody's an expert. AOC is an expert on the difference between a concentration camp and the death camp in the popular imagination. This became Auschwitz. And there's something I have to tell you as the son of a Holocaust survivor, I am boiling.
Speaker 2 00:09:03 There's a very big difference between me and you. There was no family member of mine who went through the Holocaust. None. So I appreciate that my sensitivities are very different, but where I'm sitting, you'll see when the Holocaust is this unique, evil that can never be compared. You'll see, you're killing it. I appreciate that for you, for your father, for your family. How could I compare Texas to Auschwitz? Okay. There were parents that were separated. You don't have gas chambers, and I appreciate that. But when you keep it as nothing could be compared, you'll see, I'm telling you from my perspective, you're trivializing it because you assume that you could maintain its importance in the eyes of people, even though you're not allowing anybody to learn anything for your mother, other than this is the one kind that
Speaker 1 00:09:58 No, I would draw a distinction between the different phases of the Holocaust, the period between 1933 and 1939, for example, or even up until 1941 until the Von C conference and the final solution, that period still belongs to the normal realm of history. Now it's not unique because we uniquely suffered. That's a vulgarity that has to be removed completely from Holocaust conversation. If this has nothing to do with the specificity of suffering, how can I compare someone dying in a gas chamber to a, an African slave in the hall of a ship slowly dying across the transatlantic. What's worse. If it becomes obscene, that's not the issue the issue is. Do we understand that there are moments in history that really are unique
Speaker 2 00:10:59 Because I haven't walked where you walk. I accept that. And I'll be silent in front of your testimony. And I accept that and I'm not arguing, but now I want to ask you a question, how will the memory of the Holocaust be preserved? How will the memory of the Holocaust be taught? You know, Vichtenstein speaks about this notion of how do we know what things mean? And we learned it through usage and then there's family resemblances and connections. You have to be able to use some
Speaker 1 00:11:27 I'm with you. Of course we have to tell about it. So the way that I apply it as a Jew is that I have two commandments to remember. I'm supposed to remember that we were slaves in the land of Egypt, and I'm supposed to remember what Amalek did to us, where we came out of Egypt. Those are the two poles of emotional memory. You have to protect myself. And I have to be generous toward others who are suffering and for looking for a takeaway, what applies to Egypt applies to the Holocaust. Feis lesson is protect yourself. Don't be naive. Be alert, know that you live in a world where genocide is possible. The second blessing is be generous toward others. Don't do to others. What was done to you? So would you learn
Speaker 2 00:12:14 From the Holocaust that we as Jews because of the Holocaust should be more sensitive to the treatment of Latino refugees? Would that be a violation of the Holocaust?
Speaker 1 00:12:23 No, it's not a violation provided that we don't compare. You have to insist on those distinctions.
Speaker 2 00:12:30 You'll see my feeling is, is that when you're going to insist on those distinctions, you're going to be creating the fact that only Jews are kosher Holocaust talkers. You know what happens when people don't talk, you'll see, it becomes irrelevant. It becomes dead. Be careful. You might be making the Holocaust so Holy, but you want to know things about Holy Holy become irrelevant. I understand that may be for you. It's too early.
Speaker 1 00:12:55 I'm not speaking now as a 25 year old traumatized son of a survivor, I'm speaking to you. It's a 67 year old Israeli who knows pretty much what you and our fellow citizens know about Jewish power and about the complexity of Jewish power and about the need to look at ourselves, to examine ourselves I'm with you. And I agree with you that we can't so sanctify the Holocaust that it becomes untouchable. But if we go your route, we risk the opposite pitfall, which is fair game. The Holocaust becomes an endless source for tantalizing and tantalizing metaphors. It is your all purpose political drawing card. And then to me, Oh, we're left with no memory at all. We are a people that know something about memory. We are custodians of memory where the world's experts in memory. How can we apply what we developed to a fine art in terms of memory of something that happened 3,500 years ago? How can we apply that to the holiday?
Speaker 2 00:14:11 Number one, I accept. And we as always, you know, it's, it's a dance. And the question is where do you cross that line? And I accept that and appreciate that. But I think we choose our experts at maintaining memory, but we also always tend to turn that memory to being only about us, for me, the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust. It's not what happened to us. It's not in that sense. My experience are different than yours. The key lesson of the Holocaust is the profound evil that human beings are capable of. Now, one of the lessons of the Holocaust, therefore, is you better protect yourself because if human beings are capable of profound, evil, that power is critical to survive in that world. But at the same time, I can associate that propensity to evil, to Jews as well. Now it's true. I have to be careful if we don't have complex terms, we can't distinguish I'm with you, but the issue is not universalizing.
Speaker 2 00:15:12 The Holocaust. The issue is what is its core message. And whether that core message is something that human beings, quite human beings need to learn from FDA. Tom wants to teach the world that you killed us and excuse me, F U F U IDF will protect us. I want the key lesson of the Holocaust to be the depth of human depravity are almost limitless. And now let's talk about what do we need to do in our world in order to prevent it. I want that to be the second takeaway, first takeaway, which yadda sham as the national custodian of Israeli and Jewish memory needs to emphasize. First of all, this was done to us. These are the lessons that the Jewish people has learned for its own self protection. And yes, in addition to that, there are universal lessons that we all need to learn. Fair enough. Let's take a brief break and we'll return with a lot of Steinhoff.
Speaker 3 00:16:19 Hi, my name is <inaudible> and I am a scholar in residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute just before the election, as part of our symposium on Judaism, citizenship, and democracy, and nine of our faculty members, including myself, came together to record short reflections on ideas that matter to Jewish communities today, to see the serious you can go to our website, Shalim hartman.org/context.
Speaker 2 00:16:49 Welcome back everyone. Hi Ilana. Good to be with you as always. How can the Jewish sources enlightened us and help us cope with the complexities of memory and anger?
Speaker 4 00:17:04 Just an observation from how heated your conversation got in. Um, I think a very honest way is you can't actually control the legacy of an event. And it's very clear from the argument that you're having, that neither of you actually have control over what the central message is going to be, and likely they're going to be competing messages, even within the same group of people, they're going to be competing messages. So I just want to say something for actually not necessarily knowing what the primary legacy is going to be, but knowing what your piece of it is going to be assuming that in the ecosystem of Holocaust memory, they're going to be other people who push for something else to be primary. So that's just my first observation and the texts I went immediately to now he's thinking about Holocaust memory is the Bible's text about remembering Emma Lake.
Speaker 4 00:17:57 And it's a famous one and a complicated one in Deuteronomy 25 verse 17. Remember what I'm a Lake did to you on your journey after you left Egypt. And it continues to describe what that was in the following verses how undeterred by fear of God. I'm a Lake surprised you on the March when you were famished and weary and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. And then we see something really shocking, which is the injunction to remember, and to act therefore, when the Lord, your God grants, you safety from all your enemies around you in the land that the Lord, your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Emma Lake from under heaven, do not forget. And these verses came to mind. So obviously, because what we're dealing with in the Holocaust, is it a type of cruelty of the cutdown, the stragglers behind you?
Speaker 4 00:18:54 They have no fear of God. And how do you respond to something like that? And so the turret gives us two responses. One is, I want you to remember, don't forget, remember that this happened. And another is blot out the memory of AMA Lake. Now block out the memory. I'm like, what does that mean? How do you respond when people are cruel to you now, you're, you've been talking about universalism in particular ism, but little pieces have come out in your conversation about to what extent do we externalize who am a Lake is? And to what extent do we internalize it? So I want to look at two different readings of how we remember I'm a Lake and what it means to blot out the memory of on the Lake. One is more ancient and the other is more modern. So not surprisingly when it's going to externalize and what it's going to internalize, but I want us to hear them side by side.
Speaker 4 00:19:52 The first one is <inaudible> chapter 13, I'm sick. There were about these like a ninth century Midrash, and it's arranged by the weekly portion. And it reads as follows. Why did God see fit to act with AMA Lake with the treat of cruelty? Which what an unbelievable opening line that seek there about these concerned? Why, why is it that we're supposed to block out the name of Bama? Like essentially kill everyone. You shall wipe out the memory of amylase. You shall kill men and women quoting verses in Samuel one. So seek them out about the answers. God said, I will give him a Lake first. What they will try to do later is revealed before me, how in the future, they will decree from the lab to the elder children and women shall die all in one day from the perms story. Therefore, you shall kill men and women, and you shall wipe out the memory of homily.
Speaker 4 00:20:52 This first reading from the ninth century echoes the whole agent worlds, read of this injunction in the terror, which is have to protect yourself. And you have to take retribution against those who are going to destroy you because power matters. It's exactly it, power matters. And we can't ignore that. And then you get to the more modern conceptions and you have someone like an I'm picking one out of many options, the kudu shat, Lavi, rabbi levy, it's like a, their ditches in his homily for Pern. And he writes something that feels very, very different. It says, remember what they did. It seems that this is not only for the seat of Israel being commanded to erase Emma Lake from the seed of a salve. Rather every person in Israel needs to erase the evil part. The Lake that is concealed in their heart. That part is known as the name of Emma Lake.
Speaker 4 00:21:52 Wherever the seed of AMA Lake is found in the world. It is also found in the human being because human beings are small worlds unto themselves. And therefore there is a reality to AMA Lake, to the force of evil inside every human being, which arises every time to make a human being sin. And regarding this, the Torah tells us to remember, this is such a different view of it. It says I'm awake can exist within each one of us. I'm a Lake is a way of being, it's a shamelessness. It's a cruelty, the lack of fear of heaven, this approach, it almost eclipses the other. And that's, I think what we're dealing with here, the question of whether these two perspectives actually end up eclipsing each other, if you forget one or the other. So are there certain times in our history where we look at this and we say, Oh, this is about us. We have to be careful the way that we behave. And there are other times in our history where we say no, it's about them and what they did to us. And we need to get rid of them. Chances are they live side by side within us. And I think a real question of the day, decades and decades after the Holocaust is can we allow them to live side by side
Speaker 2 00:23:09 Elana? I agree with you that they both have to be there. The question is, how do we do both of them? Don't they seem to be competing too often with each other. It's almost as if this type of memory has become partisan. We speak about these and these combining them. But in fact, just like, you'll see. And I, not that I agree with them, I emphasize one. And it's not that he disagrees with me, but at the end, when he talks, he always talks about the other one. So what do we do? Or where are you on this personally?
Speaker 4 00:23:39 So I'll tell you where I am on this. It depends where I am geographically, where I, when I'm sitting in the comforts of America in times when I'm not feeling a lot of antisemitism, of course, I'm asking the internal question, I'm asking, where am I to help other people? Where am I being careful? But anti-Semitism comes out. I say, well, wait a second. This is not just your garden, variety, Universalist, hatred. This is something I've seen before. This is something I know, and I'm not going to let it go. And I think sometimes when I'm in Israel, depending on what's going on, I'll emphasize one or the other, depending on actually the political moment and feelings of danger or not. I think they're accessed in different ways. But to be honest, I think part of our problem is that we try to construct simple narratives because simple narratives feel compelling, simple narratives help create a whole world around your perspective as though no other perspective exists. And I'm just, again, simple narratives in general. I don't think we're the world's greatest experts in memory. We are among those who are expert in memory. I'm sure there are plenty of other cultures that have memory of terrible things that have happened to them. In fact, genocides that are going on right now. We're not the only, we're not the best, but we're us
Speaker 2 00:25:13 Elana. It's interesting. You moved away from the classic distinctions of the universal particular to the two using categories of externalizing and internalize. What are the interesting things about Amalek is that we universalize it. It's actually a very poor example for the Holocaust in that sense, because I'm a lick there's homogenous, the Amalek and this one is like, it I'm a lick. And this one we have about ALEKS in every generation. It's not this one of a kind isolated story. And in fact, when you look in the Bible, okay, it wasn't such a good thing, but frankly, there's a lot of bad things that happen. I don't know each, it was actually probably worse than I'm a lick and what they did. And there's a lot of other examples, including some of the things that we did to the seven Canaanite nations that frankly make the Amalekites look like sweetie pies.
Speaker 2 00:26:01 So the classification of this evil using the category of Amalek, I think you're right. Moves it away from it being an exclusively particular to being a fundamental question of evil. And then as you said, there are moments for internalization, the Amalek in me and there's moments of externalization, which means how do I protect myself from that evil? So if I'm a lick, is the model for the future of Holocaust conversation. I think it is a very different one. You'll see that the one that you were pushing for, what is your feeling? Well, you know, it's interesting because now that we're in the realm of religion and introspection and the realm of the soul than the realm
Speaker 1 00:26:44 Of politics and history, it's a lot easier for me to agree with you to feel comfortable with this conversation. Yes, there's evil in each of us, what needs to be, uh, more and aware of our own capacity for Alma Lake. It's interesting. Also listening to you a lot of speak about the differences that how you feel when you're in America, when you're in Israel, because we do have to be mindful of a particular Israeli danger in Holocaust commemoration, which the FEA Tom moment really highlights. And that is the combination of the sensibility of victimhood with objective power. When you combine those two sensibilities, you get an FEA top and you get the opportunists of an Italian Yahoo nominating FEA, Tom, to be head of the ambition. And so in that sense, I'm going to undercut the passion of my own arguments and agree with you that in the Israeli context, we have a very particular Jewish set of issues we need to do,
Speaker 4 00:27:54 But I have to tell you that one of the reasons I thought about this revolution, he had stuck over ditch of texts is because I know that from an Israeli perspective, it actually really is important to ask when you have power, what's your potential for, for doing bad, for doing evil as an American. I don't feel it in the same way, but I know it. And that's actually what brought me to that text in the first place.
Speaker 1 00:28:18 So a lot of the hard gift of Zionism is to reawaken our capacity for Amalek. It's given us power. It's given us the means to indulge our darkest impulses.
Speaker 2 00:28:33 I have more than the Holocaust, but that morning it's not it's universal lesson. I can't allow that morning when I'm now in power to dominate the primary lesson of the, of this memory.
Speaker 1 00:28:49 Agreed. I'll just reaffirm one point here, which is that when our power is under such sustained assault, the legitimacy of our power is under such assault around the world. This is a moment when we need to reaffirm the bottom line Jewish takeaway from the Holocaust, which is self protection, the need for national sovereignty, and then yes, universal lessons for heaven sake. It's a product of the shell department institutes. It was produced by <inaudible> Coleman and edited by Tolli Cohen. Our managing producer is Dan Friedman and music is provided by so cool to learn more about the Shalom Hartman Institute, visit us
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