They are easy to miss. They are displayed way above eye level in a corridor that one passes through from one exhibit to another. Interactive booths with seats line the walls, attracting everyone’s attention down instead of up. Perhaps the designers of the United States Holocaust Museum planned it this way to make a point about how easy it is to ignore the “writing on the wall.”
In this case, the writing literally on the walls are the front pages of newspapers from the 1930s and 40s reporting on Hitler’s plans to exterminate the Jewish people. What these newspapers tell us is that the Holocaust was not inevitable. It happened not because Hitler was a maniac; not because German culture was authoritarian; not because centuries of Christian anti-Judaism gave power to Hitler’s anti-Semitic claims. The Holocaust happened because otherwise good people and the nations they lived in let it happen.
Will they let it happen again?
That is the specter raised by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent statement that Israel should be wiped off the map. He clearly has the will and the motive, and may soon have the physical nuclear capability to make his threat real.
His statement is the most recent reminder of the special role Jews play in the world.
It used to be that when miners descended into the earth to dig, they took with them a canary. If the canary died, they knew that they had to get out of there because the air had turned deadly.
We Jews are the canaries of the world. In a society in which Jews are attacked, no one is safe.
The killing machine the Nazis created to destroy the Jewish people killed not only six million Jews but millions of others. The terrorists who hijacked the planes that flew into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and crashed in a Pennsylvania field on 9/11 were the heirs of those who first hijacked planes to take Jewish hostages. If Iran talks with impunity about wiping one country off the map, no country is safe.
Speaker of the Swedish Parliament Bjorn von Sydow understood this when he said: “I am willing to defend the right of Israel to exist as strongly as I defend the rights of my own country to exist.” While Ahmadinejad’s statement has been condemned by Western leaders, only Sweden responded unequivocally by cutting all bilateral contact with the Iranian parliament. If anything is to be learned from the Holocaust, other nations will follow Sweden’s lead and go even further to impose sanctions and isolation.
What about us? It’s not exactly a privilege to be the canary of the world. As an Israeli congregant once quipped, “For this we were chosen? Let God choose someone else!”
To be fair, we are not the only people to suffer as the world sits idly by. Rwanda and, currently, Darfur ( www.savedafur.org) are just two of the recent genocides to come to mind. However, Jewish history is among the most marked by such recurring atrocities.
I am not sure why God chose us, the Jews, for this particular purpose, as canary of the world. Perhaps it is the burden of being custodians of the special message which is Torah: that human equality, the rule of law, the limits of power, and the dignity of every individual are not idle dreams but concrete, achievable goals for which we are to consistently strive. Being the canary for us is not a state of being the victim. Being the canary of the world comes with a moral responsibility to be the conscience of the world as well.
The newspapers on the walls of the Holocaust Museum remind us that it is all too easy, when reading bad news, to simply turn the page. Our job, as Jews, is to make sure no one turns the page, not just for us, but for all who are the targets of unmitigated hatred.
The newspapers also remind us that such hatred spreads to envelope the world when left unchecked. That is why it is not just for Israel’s sake that America and other nations should sanction and isolate Iran. It is for all our sakes.
Jews are the Canaries of the World...
Friday December 30, 2005
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About Virtual Talmud
This blog is no longer updated and is closed for comments. We welcome your comments about Judaism in our Judaism forums.
Brad Hirschfield currently blogs on Windows and Doors.
Author, radio and TV talk show host, and President of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Brad Hirschfield is the author of You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Listed as one of the nation’s 50 most influential rabbis in Newsweek, and a regular commentator on Court TV, he is the creator of the popular series, Building Bridges, airing on Bridges TV, and the co-host of the weekly radio show, Hirschfield and Kula.
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One can only be cocnerned that Jews and Israel must continue to demand a right to exist. The new enemy is revisionist history and cultural relativism. One can only be concerned that there are people who must delve into the "secrets" of Zionism, or look to a relativism of equivalence in the Nazi madness and its bizarre efficiency of death. Of course it was tragic that every day of World War II 29,000 people died be they Poles, Czechs, Russians, Romanians, Hungarians, French, Italians, Brits, Scots, Canadians, Ukranians, Dutch, Danes, Finns, Norwegians, Canadians, Americans,Serbs, Croats, Kurds, and whoever else I missed. But no where was there a fierceness to exterminate every man, woman, or child such as was seen in the efforts of the Nazi death machine and its allies to seek, find and exterminate every Dutch Jew, Polish Jew, Russian Jew, Ukranian Jew, Italian Jew, French Jew, Norwegian Jew, Hungarian Jew, Croatian Jew, Romanian Jew, and on and on to any nationality-Jew within the grasp of the Nazis killing machine and its allies. And it would have continued everywhere in the world including Britain and America if the Nazis had been victorious. The ovens were made for Jews, and the world watched the ovens being made and being used. Zyclon B was made for Jews after bullets and automobile exhaust were found to be inefficient killing tools of Jews. It is the continued existence of Israel and its fierce determination to survive, that denies the Nazis killing machine its victory and bears witness to the holocaust.
Yes. Jews ARE the "canaries" of the world. Judaism has a sweet song....but unfortunately, the world cages us, (sometimes, quite literally....no, ACTUALLY!). and, like the canaries in the mines, we are the first to feel hatred and death. A comedian whose name escapes me at the monent said it best: "Jews have been CHOSEN for so many bad things, I wish they'd choose somebody else, sometimes." I've just been listening to TVLAND's review of famous TV catchprhases. One of them seem to go right to my own heart, Paraphrased, one is: "Silly Jewish Person -- Christmas Joys are for CHRISTIANS". ("Silly rabbit...TRIX is for klids"), and "Christians don't have more fun....they have ALL the fun!) ("Do blondes have more fun?")
Being Jewish is no piece of cake. Personally, I see no advantage in it whatsoever -- the chance of the Holocaust and/or the Inquisition reappearing is always there, and in the meantime, the FEAR of these things happening can truly make on paranoid. I begin to wonder if it's true, what someone once said to me, "Thank goodness for the Anti-semites...if it wasn't for them, the Jewish people would never stick together." Is Judaism so poor in spiritual rewards, that FEAR is the only thing to keep Jews together? It certainly seems to be quite poor in material rewards...and, like it or not, we ARE living in a material world!
I'D RATHER CHOOSE, THAN BE CHOSEN, PERSONALLY. I'm sort of a "Willian Shatner" Jew...can't deny my Jewishness, but I don't make too big a thing of it. "Leonard Nimoy" Jews LOVE being Jewish, and thats OK too.. I suppose my bottom line is this: I DON'T like being Jewish. But I also don't like anyone telling me how to live my life. So -- if someone else, (for whatever reasons), actually wants to be Jewish...who am I to tell them not to be? Live and let live is my motto, I guess.
Holccaust Deniers trap themselves very neatly. No one ever denies anything that is good. So, in denying the Holocaust happened, they are actually giving it credence! Yes, it happened. And it did not "only" happen to 300,000 people, as some say. A wiser man than I -- ANDY ROONEY, on 60 Minutes, said the momenteous words, "It Happened", on the "60 Minutes" show one day...and he should know....because he saw it all first-hand, as an American soldier and concentration-camp liberator. A neighbour of mine, a US wWII vet, was also a concentration-camp liberator -- and it probably had a double-meaning to him, as my neighbour, like myself, is Jewish. The evidence--from WWII films of camps being liberated, to Steven Speilberg's continuing project, "Voices of the Shoah", shows, more each day, that indeed, the Holocaust DID happen. I feel that Holocaust deniers should be asked a SECOND questioln...the answer to which is, perhaps, as -- or even more important, right now, than the answer to the first question. The Holocaust is HISTORY...until a time-machine is invented, we cannot undo the horror. But a second question also should be asked. And that is: DO YOU THINK IT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED? And even a third question: DO YOU THINK IT SHOULD EVER HAPPEN AGAIN? The answers to THESE quesions would show how a person feels NOW. Do we have the courage to ask them? I feel we must!
"Jews are the canaries of the world". Yes, that about says it, and I'm very glad it's finally been officially noted. If caged canaries were taken into the mines, so that if there was gas there, they weould smell it first...and so die, instead of the human miners....WHO, in their right mind, would want to be a "human canary" for the rest of humanity? Oh, one might be proud of being part of the "Chosen" people....but chosen for what? To die, to test the relative humanity OF Humanity at any given time? If one wishes to be a martyr, why not just join the Peace Corps or go into the Armed Forces, and risk life and limb for helping the poor and oppressed of the world....without becoming a living target for any idiot prejudiciced person...without necessarily helping others? Why continue this burden on one's desendents?
I've heard a story of a man who did NOT want his son circumsized. The boy was born in the 1920s. When, later, the Nazis came and asked him to drop his pants, (or probably tore them off)--voila! No missing fore-skin! The boy was left alone!
As an American with dreams, I CHOOSE to be a "peacock", and not a "canary". Princess Grace is my heroine..not Anne Frank, who was a victim of choices others had made. Not just Nazis, either. Her own ancestors had "chosen" to stay Jewish...and, in the eyes of the rest of the world, stay damned. Though I respect everyone's choice, I cannot understand why anyone would want to be even a figurative "canary". Why can't we all realize the TRUTH: that EVERYONE IS THE SAME: A HUMAN BEING! One God equals One Hunmanity!
Or perhaps not a peacock. On second thought, I'd far much rather be a swan. Graceful, above the fray, giving no opinions and taking no part in political or social conflict. SO perfect, SO serene. SO totally, delightfully un-Jewish. Yes! I'd much prefer to be swan, rather than a loud peacock, and certainly, certainly prefer to be a serene swan than a poor little victimized canary! I still can't, for the life of me, see why anyone would actually Want to be a "Canary of the World"....but, as was mentioned on the television programme, "Star Trek", 'There's no accounting for taste.'.
Yes, Grace Kelly, Her Serene (!) Highness Grace of Monaco, DID die. But while she was alive, she was loved and admired. She was NO? afraid of being hated or discriminated against. She was "High Irish" to begin with....then a venerated Princess. Is there something called "High Jewish"? I doubt it....the Cohens and the Levites were sent to the concentration camps, and endured the pograms, along with every other Jewish person. Money didn't help them either. Indeed, Jews ARE the canaries of the world. I hope I may be forgiven that I have higher hopes, and higher ambitions than that, for myself and those I love. Of course, I've seen too many variations in Jews...in Jewish People...to believe in any of the stupid anti-semitic stereotypes of the world. But to have these stereotypes visited upon myself and my loved ones? Not if I can help it! But I suppose -- rebellious and infuriated though I am -- I will stay Jewish....if only to prove to the anti-semites of the world that Jews are NOT all alike! I see Judaism as a RELIGION ONLY. And I truly believe that Jews are no better and no worse than anyone else. Just people. As varied as William Shatner and Jerry Lewis and Aba Eban and Meyer Lansky and Dinah Shore, (the daughter of a rabbi who NEVER let it be known that she was Jewish). And Muriel Siebert....SO estranged from Judiasm that she was not included in a large, coffee-table book of Jewish women. And Golda Meyier. The only thing these people had in common is that they were/are all Jewish. But I can't want that for myself. I prefer the "Swan's Life". Can I have it, and stay Jewish too? I don't know. But if I have to choose, I have no doubt whatsoever that I would choose to be the Swan, and never the canary!