Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. Jon D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1985), p. 69. 2. Sydney Jewish Museum accession number: M2006/002:001. 3. The author was the Project Director/Curator of the exhibition team that was responsible for the use and placement of the Torah in the SJM’s permanent exhibition Culture and Continuity: Journey through Judaism. My thanks go to SJM Curators Roslyn Sugarman and Shannon Maguire, Education Officer Mariela Sztrum and Exhibition designer Jisuk Han for their spirited discus- sion on this matter. 4. Suzanne D. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (Sydney: Brandl & Schlesinger, 1997), pp. 233– 41. 5. Mark Raphael Baker, The Fiftieth Gate (Sydney: Harper Collins, 1997), p. 174. In the book, Baker tells the history of his parents’ survival through record- ing and recounting his parents’ memories while attempting to place their stories within the historical record. In so doing, Baker is confronted by the frailty of memory and the desire individuals have to find retrospective mean- ing in their experiences. To contend with these competing ambitions, Baker employs a mix of classical and modern midrashim (rabbinic parables such as the one quoted here) throughout the work in an attempt to both chronicle Holocaust history and grapple with its meaning. 6. While the term ‘metahistory’ is not exclusively a religious or ‘sacred’ cat- egory, it is utilized in this manner throughout the study to refer to classical Jewish sacred narratives (biblical and rabbinic) and, in particular, the search for transcendent meaning in the past that they describe. The exact meaning with which the term in used in this book is outlined in the introductory chapter. 7. The use of the term ‘political’ throughout this work is conceived of broadly and includes, in Mark Chmiel’s useful definition, both how ‘persons can translate private grievances into public issues’ and how ‘persons can han- dle, or mobilize others to handle social or private issues by having recourse to general or universal political ideas, rights and democratic norms’. Mark Chmiel, ‘The Political Varieties of Sacred Remembrance: Elie Wiesel and United States Foreign Policy’, Journal of Church and State, 40, no. 4 (1998), p. 829. 8. The use of the capitalized term ‘Event’ to refer to the Holocaust comes into common usage throughout the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, a project that culminated in the creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The term is developed, in particular, by Elie Wiesel and Michael Berenbaum, and is examined in greater detail in Chapter 2. 197 198 Notes 1 The Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Built Theodicy 1. All biblical quotations are taken from the Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1985). 2. Holocaust memorial museums were not the first memorial museums to emerge but in terms of their proliferation and influence they have become increasingly important with regard to the development of this genre. For a comprehensive survey of the history and content of major memorial muse- ums, see Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford: Routledge, 2007). 3. See, for example, Grieg Crysler and Abidin Kusno, ‘Angels in the Temple: The Aesthetic Construction of Citizenship at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’, Art Journal, 56, no. 1 (Spring 1997), pp. 52– 64; and Stephanie Shosh Rotem, Constructing Memory: Architectural Narratives of Holocaust Museums (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013). 4. The most well known of these critiques are the pioneering works of James Young. See James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); The Changing Shape of Holocaust Memory (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1995); At Memory’s Edge: After- Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); James E. Young (ed.), The Art of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History (New York: Prestel, 1994). 5. The most influential is, of course, Hayden White’s use of the term in his now- classic study, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth- Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973). While White’s analysis of ‘deep structure’ holds relevance for this work, the emphasis here is not on the largely nineteenth- century paradigms that White identifies, but rather on far more ancient and enduring archetypes. Hence, the terms metahistory and ‘the sacred’ referred to throughout this book relate to enduring Jewish (and at times Christian) responses to destruction— many of which could be grouped under the umbrella term of theodicy. These definitions and explanations are developed further in the current chapter. 6. There is a growing interest in these issues. See Oren Baruch Stier, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). However, while Stier does engage with post- Holocaust theology in his discussion of the placement of train carriages in Holocaust museums and memorials, he does not frame his discussion within a long- range view of Jewish theological response to destruction. Also see Stier, ‘Torah and Taboo: Containing Jewish Relics and Jewish Identity at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’ Numen 57 (2010), pp. 505– 36. The more recent work of Jennifer Hansen- Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2014) also attempts to bring sociological categories of religion to bear but again does not provide a thorough going analysis of how these categories relate to traditional Jewish responses. 7. While this proclivity is predominant, it does not discount the existence of visually based commemorative strategies in the Jewish tradition. See Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (eds), The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and S. Brent Plate (ed.), Religion, Art and Visual Culture: A Cross- Cultural Reader (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 195– 211. Notes 199 8. The contemporary museum is, of course, a complex and ever changing entity. For a concise summary of its history, see Edward P. Alexander, ‘What is a Museum?’, in Edward P. Alexander (ed.), Museums in Motion: Introduction to the History and Function of Museums (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1979), pp. 5– 15. Also see Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (Oxon, UK: Routledge. 1995). For an overview of the development of memorial museums in particular, see Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford: Routledge, 2007). 9. Clearly, what constitutes ‘the Jewish tradition’ is an extremely complex and heterogenous category. Throughout the work the term is understood to refer to both ancient Israelite religion and its transformation and continuation into the classical rabbinic period. Where necessary, distinctions are made between the two. The term takes into account both the halakchic (legal) and aggadic (legend) aspects of the classical Jewish corpus and again, where necessary, makes the relevant distinctions. In discussion pertaining to the modern period, consideration is given both to the transformation of tradi- tion due to the process of secularization and also its ‘ co- option’ into the variety of streams that comprise modern Judaism. In particular, in this study it is the dynamics of Jewish ‘history and memory’ within the broad purview of ‘the tradition’ that is at stake and a conceptual framework to ground such discussion is found further on in the current chapter. 10. The most powerful exponents of such views within the field of Holocaust representation are undoubtedly the literary critic Lawrence Langer and, with regard to Holocaust memorials in particular, James Young. While both Young’s and Langer’s work has been of inestimable value in establishing and sketching the boundaries of the field, their tendency to equate the redemp- tive with the simplistic or ameliorating is highly problematic. Their critiques of redemptive Holocaust representation forms will be taken up and exam- ined further along in this chapter. 11. Dan Stone, Constructing the Holocaust (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), p. xiv. 12. The memorial museums chosen are all based in countries that have active Jewish communities. As such, their development took place within either a partial (USHMM and SJM) or near- total (in the case of Yad Vashem) Jewish context. Institutions in ‘perpetrator’ countries are not often the initiatives of such communities and while they would provide an interesting contrast, it was simply not possible within the constraints of this study to include them. 13. An example of a similar approach with regard to the influence of bibli- cal narratives on national narratives is found in A. Dirk Moses, ‘Biblical Narratives in German and American National Utopias’ in Norbert Finzsch and Hermann Wellenreuther (eds), Visions of the Future in Germany and America (Oxford: Berg 2001). Another work that forges new understandings of the connections between ‘sacred and secular’ realms from a political per- spective can be found in Danielle Celermajer, The Sins of the Nation and the Ritual of Apologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009). 14. Due to the specific nature of this study as one that