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Remembering to Remember: We Must Reinvent Holocaust Memorial Day

[additional-authors]
April 20, 2020
A flower is placed by next to the name of a former concentration camp inside the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem. Photo by Amir Cohen/Reuters

1. Does anti-Semitism ever decline? Reading the annual reports of organizations that deal with this phenomenon might give you the impression that no — it never does. One year it rises because of political developments. Another year because of a war in the Middle East. This year it is spiking because of the coronavirus. The haters can always find something to blame on the Jews. There are always Jews that rightly worry about such haters. There is always an organization whose mission is to prove that anti-Semitism is an urgent problem.

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel, and data on anti-Semitism is all over the airwaves. “2019 witnessed a rise of 18% in major violent cases compared to 2018,” declares a report by the Tel Aviv University Kantor Center for the Study of European Jewry and the European Jewish Congress. What can we do with such information?

Another organization, Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA),  argues that “since the spread of the corona[virus] epidemic worldwide, there has been an increase in content distribution of Anti-semitism in the online space.” FOA found 303 pieces of anti-Semitic content on social media in a month. It removed “at least” 40 of those. I am not sure what these numbers mean, why the FOA believes this is an increase (and compared to when), and how removing 40 tweets or posts saves the Jewish people. But I commend the organization on fighting the good fight.

2. According to a 2019 FRA report, 41% of Jews aged 16-34 have considered emigrating from Europe because of anti-Semitism over the last five years. The Israeli government can make aliyah a bit more attractive, but the economics of the coronavirus era limits its capabilities. Jewish organizations can work to ease the departure of Jews from problematic places, but their tendency is to stay and fight, and not surrender to harassment. While I believe in many countries this is a futile fight (I am on the record stating that France’s Jews have no choice but to move to Israel), I can easily sympathize with the sentiment.

3. A few months ago, I listed my 10 rules for dealing with anti-Semitism in America. One of them was that anti-Semitism is not the result of a lack of strategy. When we get reports that tell us anti-Semitism goes up or down (well, never down), our tendency is to look for bureaucratic solutions. We envision a world body that can direct the fight, or an office that can push for more resources and coordination.

The sad truth — and Holocaust Memorial Day is not a bad time to be reminded of it — is that anti-Semitism is not a problem that the Jews can fix by having a more efficient bureaucracy. It is a problem from which the Jews suffer, and from which they can offer certain escapes, be it aliyah or self-defense. But much like with the coronavirus, this is not something that the Jews control. We do not hold the key to stopping the plague. Nor do we hold the key to stopping anti-Semites from using the plague to incite hate.

4. Looking back at other things I wrote about Holocaust Memorial Day, I came across this point, probably still controversial:

The complete annihilation of the most significant community of Jews, the demise of the old center of Jewish life, created a vacuum that needed to be filled. And Israel fast became the main, if not the only, prospective candidate to fill this civilizational void. Israel became the place in which Jews would reform an essential center of gravity.

5. In the book I wrote about Israeli Judaism (with Prof. Camil Fuchs) we discuss the similarities and differences between two Jewish days of mourning, Yom Ha’Shoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) and Tisha B’Av. When the Israeli parliament drew the laws for Tisha B’Av, it used Yom Ha’Shoah as a template. And yet the result was very different. Here is a paragraph from the book:

Tisha B’Av, like Yom Hashoah, was declared a day of national mourning, during which entertainment venues are prohibited from opening. But while the respective laws are similar, there is a vast difference between these two dates in the consciousness of Israelis: Four out of five Jews in Israel say they “feel sad” on Yom Hashoah (78%)… Yom Hashoah is a day on which the left (77%), the right (77%), and the political center (79%) all feel sad… The situation on the other national day of mourning, Tisha B’Av, is quite different. More than half of the Jews in Israel (55%) feel that Tisha B’Av is a “completely regular day.” This is true of almost all Jews who identify as totally secular (97%), a large majority of somewhat traditional secular Jews (84%), and also half of the traditionalists (50%). The same goes for most of the political center (75%) and a large majority of the left (91%).

Why is this important? The destruction of Jerusalem happened many years ago, and the Holocaust is relatively fresh in our memory. What we learn from the difference between the ways Jews treat these two dates (in Israel) is that time matters. In other words, as the last survivors begin to reach the end of their long lives, we face a challenge. Remembering is not easy. Mourning is cumbersome. To keep Holocaust Memorial Day as meaningful tomorrow as it is today, we must reinvent it for the next generation.

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