February 3, 2022

In his attempt to define the threshold test for obscenity, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked, “I know it when I see it.”

We’ve seen—and heard—a few things over the past few weeks that clearly cross the threshold.

On Jan. 10, the school board of McMinn County, Tenn. voted unanimously to remove “Maus”—Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust—from its middle school curriculum, claiming that the book’s profanity and nudity made it unfit for middle school students. As David Corn writing in “Mother Jones” put it: “Of course, it’s ridiculous to object to an account of the mass murder of six million Jews and millions of others because of salty language and (animal!) nudity. But that’s what happened. Spiegelman told the New York Times it seemed to him the board members were asking, ‘Why can’t they teach a nicer Holocaust?’”

I’ve used “Maus” as a text when teaching middle school students, and I can relate first-hand how powerful, approachable, important and singular this text is. The “salty” language contained in the book includes words that you’ll hear on network television these days, and the nudity—as noted above—is limited to Spiegelman’s illustrations of naked cats and mice. I dare say that most every middle school student in this country has seen far more explicit material on the internet.

The school board’s decision denies these students a pedagogically-sound, effective, and age-appropriate opportunity to learn about this critically important historical event. I’m not sure if it’s motivated by antisemitism, a desire to spare these middle schoolers from the disturbing facts of genocide, or a broader campaign across the country to ban books that parents find objectionable for a particular reason. What I do know is that it should disturb us as Jews for a few reasons.

The school board’s decision denies these students a pedagogically-sound, effective, and age-appropriate opportunity to learn about this critically important historical event.

First, because, as the Rambam taught centuries ago, we must accept truth wherever it is to be found (“ושמע האמת ממי שאמרו”—Introduction to the “Shmoneh Perakim”). For him, the search for truth by studying history and science was a path to the knowledge of the Divine—the most exalted pursuit imaginable. Second, because the removal of such an effective, relatable teaching tool for young people will erode the already-woeful state of Holocaust education and awareness in our country. A 2020 survey indicated that a staggering 63% of adults surveyed did not know that six million Jews were murdered in the Shoah.

This week, during a roundtable discussion of the school board’s decision on “The View,” we saw Whoopi Goldberg share her belief that the Holocaust was about “man’s inhumanity to man” and “not about race.” Any student of history (or even a fan of Mel Brooks’ “The Producers”) knows that the Shoah was very much about race. The Nazis considered Aryans racially pure, and saw Jews, conversely, as an inferior race that had to be exterminated like vermin for the common good. In Spiegelman’s parlance, while cats and mice are both animals, they are clearly different species, and the role of the superior species is to eradicate the inferior.

On Tuesday, Amnesty International released a report labeling Israel an “apartheid” state. While one can certainly criticize Israel’s policies in the West Bank, the label is a form of demonization that crosses over to antisemitism. The Reform movement’s response to the report makes this case quite clearly.

There is something obscene and disturbing about each of these episodes. Book banning is inherently problematic, all the more so when we consider how the Nazis themselves employed this technique to further marginalize Jewish authors who were already considered “others.” Removing Jews from the Holocaust or portraying it as an event about hatred generally rather than about hatred of Jews specifically is offensive. Critique that repeatedly crosses over to demonization becomes a form of hate speech.

Critique that repeatedly crosses over to demonization becomes a form of hate speech.

When we see, as we do so often these days, the obscenity of antisemitism or other forms of xenophobia, we have to call it what it is. We have to speak the truth about its nature and hope that, in so doing, others will accept this truth—this correction—and respond.

Searching out, accepting and embracing truth, especially a challenging one, can be painful. Yes, being exposed to the horrors of the Holocaust is disturbing for a feeling person of any age, but to hide this truth is obscene. Calling out others for failing to see the truth of our experience can be uncomfortable, but it is a discomfort that can lead to greater understanding. Confronting distortions of the truth that are increasingly broadly accepted can be a lonely endeavor, but it is painfully necessary.

Whenever and wherever, whether it’s easy or difficult, when we see the truth distorted we must raise our voices.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.

News that Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is rethinking its approach to counting diaspora Jewry is a welcome development. The CBS has consistently undercounted world Jewry, particularly the Jews of the United States who are the largest diaspora Jewish community. At a time when antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment are increasing, ensuring that Israel understands the size and composition of the worldwide Jewish community is of enormous strategic importance.

In countries where Jews are a minority population, it is challenging to collect accurate population data. In the United States, the Census Bureau is prohibited from asking questions about religion, and its questions about ethnicity do not identify those who are Jewish. Official government statistics notwithstanding, increasingly sophisticated surveys, sponsored by public policy institutes as well as Jewish communal organizations, enable estimates of the American Jewish population.

There is a growing consensus about the size of the U.S. Jewish population among scholars of the American Jewish community. Multiple studies, including a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, as well as a synthesis of data from hundreds of studies conducted by the American Jewish Population Project at Brandeis University, indicate that the U.S. Jewish population now exceeds 7.5 million adults and children.

Current estimates of the U.S. Jewish population represent a 35% increase in the number of U.S. Jews from 1990 and a 10% increase over the last decade. The estimate does not include the nearly 3 million adults who have Jewish parentage but do not consider themselves Jewish, nor does it include children in Jewish households who are not being raised Jewish in some way. Even as a conservative estimate, the 7.5 million figure contrasts significantly with the estimate of 6 million U.S. Jews currently used by the CBS.

Skeptics may believe that the consensus estimate of 7.5 million is the result of a change in the definition of “Who is a Jew.” However, current studies use essentially the same sociological definition that has been relied on by researchers for decades. An adult Jew is an individual who considers themselves to be Jewish and has Jewish parentage or has converted. A Jewish child is someone under the age 18 who lives in a Jewish household and is being raised in some way Jewish.

What has changed is that an American Jew is increasingly likely to marry or partner with a non-Jew.  However, in contrast to patterns of earlier generations, the children of intermarried parents are increasingly likely to be raised Jewishly, receive Jewish education and, as adults, claim their Jewish identity.

Professor Sergio DellaPergola of Hebrew University, who has long studied Jewish population dynamics, is the progenitor of the CBS’ current estimate. His population estimates include only those in the Jewish population whom he considers “core Jews.” In particular, he excludes adults who are the offspring of only one Jewish parent and who indicate they are Jewish because of ethnicity, culture or family connection, but who otherwise claim no religion. Notably, he excludes some who are halachically Jewish (i.e., a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father).

There are profound implications to excluding some Jews who have only one Jewish parent. To the extent the decision is based on whether they think of their Jewish identity as religious or secular, it establishes a criterion for Jewishness that is not applied to other Jews. Given the important role the United States Jewish community plays vis-à-vis Israel, it does not make sense to reject some Jews. It creates unnecessary divisiveness and undermines efforts to build bridges among world Jewry.

Some may argue that population counts are not meaningful. Nevertheless, knowing the size of the population provides the denominator that makes it possible to understand the ways and extent to which different communities, and groups within the community, express their Jewish identities and their relationship with Israel.

Knowing the size of the population provides the denominator that makes it possible to understand the ways and extent to which different communities, and groups within the community, express their Jewish identities and their relationship with Israel.

One measure of U.S. Jewish identity has traditionally been connection to Israel. Even when one includes the U.S. Jews currently ignored by Israel’s official statistics, the vast majority of American Jews feel an emotional connection to Israel, and nearly half of them have visited Israel. Those U.S. Jews who have spent time in Israel tend to be the most highly attached and supportive of Israel. Many of these individuals have a long history of Jewish education and involvement; however, we also know that the educational efforts can have a significant impact on the Jewish trajectories of less connected Jewish adults.

Birthright Israel, for example, has brought nearly half of million North American Jews to Israel since 1999. One third of the participants are children of intermarried parents, and many of these individuals would not have been counted as Jews by the CBS. Two decades of research demonstrates that participation in Birthright produces long-lasting effects on these individuals’ connection to Judaism and to Israel. Participation has an especially strong impact on those from one-Jewish-parent households and those whose only connection to Judaism is non-religious.

To be Jewish is to be connected to Jews in the past, present and future. Especially in a crisis-torn world, it makes no sense for the Jewish population estimates used by the government of Israel to exclude some Jews based on how they express their Jewish identities. Our collective future depends on understanding our strength and appreciating the diversity of our respective communities.

Leonard Saxe, PhD is the Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and Social Policy at Brandeis University

There is no special place in my heart for Ukraine. Its cities and villages have a history of rich Jewishness, no doubt, but this runs parallel to their just-as-rich history of antisemitism. It’s possible that a few of my ancestors hailed from Kyiv or Odessa, yet this only makes my contempt for Ukraine more personal—as it does for surrounding nations who were just as complicit in the murder of their Jews, and that continue to harbor growing far-right movements. 

But several years ago, my understanding of foreign policy and my views on how the United States should react when our allies are threatened began to shift, from a more hands-off preference to a desire for more engagement. As Russia once again makes a bid for territory outside its borders, I see the importance of holding international bullies accountable, for not only does it concern me as an American, but also as a Jew. 

In considering Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, it seems beyond coincidence that the two top adversaries to western stability in the 20th century both treated their Jewish populations in despicable and barbaric ways. Also apparent is that isolationism in the United States has almost always been deployed in conjunction with concerns regarding Jews, whether it was conservatives in the 1930s preaching against involvement in Europe (using anti-Jewish conspiracies to fan justifications of Nazism,) or radical anti-war movements later in the century that absorbed anti-Zionist propaganda. From reading books like “The Plot Against America” by Philip Roth, which depicts a fictional, counter-historical nightmare scenario for American Jews in which our country elects as president a non-interventionist (Charles Lindbergh, also a suspected Nazi sympathizer) at the dawn of World War II, I now realize that my responsibility as one of those American Jews is to defend the societies that have defended me. My own best interest appears to be on the line.  

In considering Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, it seems beyond coincidence that the two top adversaries to western stability in the twentieth century both treated their Jewish populations in despicable and barbaric ways. 

Russia threatened the planet with nuclear annihilation not forty years ago, and now they are amassing a legion to trespass into Ukraine. I observe the reactions of the people around me. On the far left are those who claim to be anti-imperialists, certainly when it involves the demonization of Israel. Yet they are mainly quiet when it comes to Russia, exposing their hypocrisy. They even sneer at the west, buying into the false narrative that we are the true antagonists in this conflict. On the far right, on the other hand, are “America First’’ isolationists, who trivialize allyship with international partners and bemoan what they believe is a too-heavy American burden in the foreign arena. 

What these polarized responses have in common is the way they undermine institutions like NATO, which exist to defend the interests of liberal democratic nations, and anti-establishment messaging in favor of more radical politics. They also both share a history of antisemitism: The anti-Zionist left uses accusations of imperialism and colonialism to delegitimize Jewish nationhood, while the right pokes the embers of hatred with their “the globalists are responsible” fearmongering. None of this should be a surprise. Contempt for liberalism and contempt for Jews usually intersect, and an ideology that advocates disengagement from the larger world outside of one’s own borders is sure to unnerve a people with such cosmopolitan proclivities. 

Internal conflict is not new in Jewish American life. The editors of Commentary Magazine wrestled with their ideology in the late 1960s, failing to stifle their strong anti-Soviet impulses despite their favor toward a more liberal domestic political scene. Irving Kristol once defined a neoconservative as “a liberal who’s been mugged by reality.” I’ll confess that I am uncomfortable with this label, as my domestic views break slightly leftward. But with isolationism seeming to guide both parties toward the poles, do traditional right-wing/left-wing categories of foreign policy even exist anymore? What I know to be true is that a foreign autocrat is threatening the stability of democracies. That is a reality we should, to use Kristol’s term, mug back—whether we call it liberal or conservative.  

In a post-World War II era, I deeply care about an apparatus of nations capable of holding despots and tyrants accountable, not only as a patriotic American, but as a Jew who understands the fragility of global order, and the imminent danger should it unravel.

Vladimir Putin desires chaos. He’s made this known since his days as a KGB agent up to the 2016 American presidential election, and again in 2020 when he favored both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, knowing that two polarized and anti-establishment candidates on the ballot would cripple American unity. The Kremlin has planted the seeds of destruction in several European countries as well, supporting anti-democratic leaders like Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus and exploiting anti-government protests like The Yellow Vests in France. Putin resents NATO, he despises the EU, and backs the morally repugnant regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In instability, he sees opportunity. 

We Jews are the opposite. When nations are at peace with one another, when there is an abundant supply of resources to be traded and distributed, and when political temperatures are cool enough to avoid sectarian violence, we thrive. This explains why our interests and the interests of the democratic world have aligned—democracies at home and abroad exist to maintain tolerance between different groups and nations. One of these groups is the Jewish people, and one of these nations is Israel. In a post-World War II era, I deeply care about an apparatus of nations capable of holding despots and tyrants accountable, not only as a patriotic American, but as a Jew who understands the fragility of global order, and the imminent danger should it unravel. Rule-breaking must be checked. And when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the rules are hanging on by a thread.

Blake Flayton is New Media Director and columnist at the Jewish Journal.

Whoopi Goldberg knows little about the Holocaust and less about Nazi Racism, but she got half the story right.

Contrary to Nazi ideology, Jews are not a race, they are a people and a religion. There are many Jews of color, Black Jews, Hispanic Jews, Asian Jews—not just Jews who are White. The Rabbi of Central Synagogue whom a hostage-taking terrorist mistakenly believed was the key to liberating a convicted ISIS terrorist in a nearby Texas jail, is an Asian-American Jew-by-choice. One can convert to Judaism, one can choose, as many have in this generation, to become a Jew.

Under Nazi ideology, Germans stood at the peak of a racial pyramid, the master race. Those to the West of Germany in Europe fared better and were more respected than those to the East. The Nazis regarded the people to the West as superior. The Danes were considered their brethren. Not so the Slavs to the East. Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and the architect of the Holocaust, wrote: “For the non-German population of the East, there must be no higher school than the fourth grade of elementary school. The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500, writing one’s name and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. …I do not think that reading is desirable.”

The Germans even targeted their own, Germans of special needs—in offensive terms, “the mentally retarded, physically handicapped, mentally distraught and congenitally ill Germans” were considered “life unworthy of living,” “food wasters,” using scarce resources of the German people who could enhance the lives of their superiors. They, not the Jews, were the first to be gassed in the Tiergarten 4 (T-4) program, named for the building where the murders were implemented.

The Nazis targeted Afro-Germans, so-called “Rhineland Bastards,” the offspring of North African troops who were part of the invading French Army that married or merely impregnated German women.

In Nazi ideology—and after September 1935 in German law—the Jews were a race, defined not by the identity they embraced, the religion they practiced, or the traditions they regarded as sacred, but by the blood of their grandparents. Even priests and nuns, Protestant pastors as well, whose ancestors had converted were regarded as Jews, defined by the blood of those ancestors who had chosen a different faith. Edith Stein, a Catholic nun was murdered at Auschwitz; Eugen Rosenstock Huessy, the great Protestant theologian, had to flee to the United States. Their “crime” was not their faith nor their religion but the blood of their grandparents. The only building left standing in the Warsaw Ghetto after the Ghetto Uprising was a Roman Catholic Church, which served parishioners who professed the Catholic faith but were defined by German regulations as Jews. Jews were regarded as a cancer by Nazi ideology, a threat to the well-being of the Master Race.

In Nazi ideology, the Jews were a race, defined not by the identity they embraced, but by the blood of their grandparents.

At first, Jews were subjected to elimination by forced emigration from German society, culture and land, and then, as the Holocaust began its killing phase, Jew were to be what the Nazis termed “exterminated,” in systematic state-sponsored murder. UCLA’s Saul Friedlander, himself a survivor whose parents were murdered in the Holocaust, termed it redemptive antisemitism—in Nazi ideology, the murder of the Jews was essential to saving the German nation.

Ms. Goldberg, who seems to know little of this history, sees racism as a Black/White phenomenon, yet understands Jews are not a race, but a multi-racial people, who welcome converts. So she could not understand that in the Nazi universe, the ultimate expression of its racist policies was the murder of the Jews. Ms. Goldberg sees Jews as White and hence the issue of race cannot apply. She forgets that false racism and genocide allowed Black Hutus to commit genocide on their Black Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda or West Pakistanis to commit genocide on their East Pakistani/Bengladeshi neighbors.

The issue of race did undeniably apply to the Holocaust. German science, German universities, German doctors, many of them brilliantly trained in pre-Hitler years—often by Jews—tried their hardest to show that Jews were a race, a race that threatened the very survival of the German nation. They distorted their science and they violated the oath of their profession. Doctors presided over the selektions at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They may not have directly administered the poison Xyklon B gas (which arrived in Red Cross trucks) in the gas chambers, but were present at the gassings to pronounce the dead dead.

We should invite Ms. Goldberg to learn a bit and see that in other cultural contexts the issue of race cannot be viewed as a Black/White phenomenon.

We should invite Ms. Goldberg to learn a bit and see that in other cultural contexts the issue of race cannot be viewed as a Black/White phenomenon. Though the political, social, ideological, and legal contexts are so very different, the venom is the same.

Perhaps we should forgive her for she knows not whereof she speaks. Surely, we should educate herself to learn more. Ignorance can be an invitation to learning, an opportunity to grow. We should all aim to be smarter tomorrow than we were yesterday.

Michael Berenbaum is a Professor of Jewish Studies at American Jewish University and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust.