Too Much Commonality Leads to Particular Suffering Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am 29 5776 ~ May 7, 2016 Parashat Acharei Mot ~ Yom HaShoah

We spoke in some detail about the Holocaust last month when I confessed the unfortunate confluence of my 40th birthday with the date of Hitler’s birth as well, along with the 17th anniversary of the Columbine Shootings. We’re now to parashat Acharei Mot, which happens to mark my bar anniversary. Have you ever heard of Godwin’s Law? It’s the principle which states that if an online discussion (in a comments page or a Facebook thread, regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will mention Hitler or Nazis. Godwin’s Law does not apply to sermons, which is good – we need uplifting or otherwise meaningful topics to chew on. Nevertheless, this occurring as it does between Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron, coupled with some of the news from this , leads me back here.

Here’s what we read in the parasha, k’ma’aseh eretz mitzrayim asher tashavtem bah, lo ta’asu, “Do not mimic the practices of where you [recently] dwelt.” U’ch’ma’aseh eretz k’na’an asher ani meivi etchem shamah, lo ta’asu, but also, “...don’t imitate the behavior of the Canaanites who live in the land to which you are headed” (Lev 18:3). Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire! And Abarbanel, the 15th Century Iberian and Italian commentator explains it’s perfectly normal to imitate the practices of one’s fellow countrymen. So perhaps there’s something particularly awful about these two countries, Egypt and Canaan? says as much, Magid sh’ma’aseihem shel mitzrim v’shel k’na’anim, “This demonstrates the behavior of the Egyptians and Canaanites”, m’kulkalim mikol haumot, “…was more perverse than every other nation.” And that may be. But if there’s an alarm going off for you, if you’re inclined to think no one or two nations hold a monopoly on depravity, I think you’re on to something. Because the text itself doesn’t really imply anything intrinsically terrible about these countries. There are other nations who get singled out in various ways- Amalek, Moav. But the Egyptians and Canaanites seem to have the dubious distinction only of being the majority culture in their respective lands – the one from which we are escaping and the one to which we are going.

It was on this pasuk I was ruminating as I read the story this week about Julia Ioffe. She’s the reporter who wrote a critical, but reasonably tame, piece in GQ® about Melania Trump. And Melania wasn’t particularly happy with the piece. But I’m less concerned with Ms. Trump’s reaction and more, much more concerned, with the behavior of numerous internet trolls and malcontents who, in Melania’s defense, have been inundating Ms. Ioffe with reprehensible anti- Semitic slurs and caricatures. [Movie images: “Back to the Oven.” Song lyrics: “Gas me baby one more time” with Ioffe’s face on Brittany Spears’ body. Her face on black and white images of concentration camp victims wearing yellow stars. Threats about making her into a lampshade. Phone calls playing recorded Hitler speeches.] It goes on and on. But the tweet that truly made me catch my breath, was actually Ioffe’s herself, the one from April 28, the day after her article dropped, and after a full day of enduring this vitriol. She tweeted, “For those among you who appreciate irony: my family arrived in the US (legally) 26 years ago today. We were fleeing anti-Semitism.” 3200 years after the Exodus, Ma’aseh eretz mitzrayim…. Ma’aseh eretz k’na’an. Another Jewish journey from frying pan to fire. I don’t want to appear down on this country. I’m proud to be an American. But this week of Yom Hashoah, we are reminded that for all the blessings of America, the brutality and malevolence of Anti-Semitism may be mitigated but surely is not prevented by border or nationality or epoch or age. It is not the only hatred but it has been called “the longest hatred” and, in some ways, it is the deepest as well.

The question is, are Egypt and Canaan equally problematic for us? It seems no. There are three words we have not yet mentioned, because the Torah adds something to the second part of the verse. Why does it say, with regard to the Canaanites only, u’vechukoteihem lo teileichu, and “don’t follow their laws?” Not just their behavior, but their laws. Because, I would suggest, in Egypt we had little choice whether or not the follow their laws. In Egypt, avadim hayinu, we were slaves. But ata b’nei chorin, now and in the Promised Land, we are free. And free people are more acutely in danger of making the wrong choices. If my math is right, Julia Ioffe left Russia in 1990 one year before the fall of the Soviet Union as the infrastructure of totalitarian Communism was crumbling in Europe. in that country had not been free. In this country, so far, we are.

But the freedom we enjoy as a minority culture comes at a cost. We must be the bearers of our pain, the narrators of forgotten narratives and agitators to the complacent and ignorant. We do this reluctantly; who among us wishes to relive trauma such as our people’s again and again? But we must. Because, to paraphrase Hillel the Elder, if we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? We are not merely pain, of course. We are triumph and innovation and discovery and love. But we are also pain. If Pesach teaches anything it is that we are our story. And our story is us. And if we don’t tell it, guess how long before it stops getting told?

But from Pesach we learn another truth: We don’t have to be somber all the time either. Serious and sad are not the same. can be fun, and, as you know, it can also be quite funny. We Jews can find humor, Mel Brooks taught us, even in the Holocaust. And that’s important, because a precision instrument like The Producers can sometimes be more effective than the blunt tool of the Anti-Defamation League. Both are valuable.

We must lead so that others follow, so that others begin to understand and bear witness to our story as well. And when they do, we should tell that story too. Like how Ricky Gervais confronted Anti-Semitism at the Golden Globes this year. Remember how he signed off at the end of the entire show? “From myself and Mel Gibson, Shalom!” And it was powerful as well when the President spoke earlier this year at a ceremony for International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He said, “When we see some Jews leaving major European cities because they no longer feel safe; when Jewish centers are targeted from Mumbai to Overland Park, Kansas; when swastikas appear on college campuses — when we see all that and more, we must not be silent. An attack on any faith is an attack on all of our faiths…. We are all Jews,” he said. A comforting message especially this week which saw the suspension of two high level members of Britain’s Labour Party for Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionist comments – and emerging evidence of dozens more.

But, as laudable as this kind of attempted empathy can be, I want to caution us against too much universalizing the Holocaust or anti-Semitism. First, because each group which is subject to discrimination and disdain: people of color, the disabled, women, the LGBTQ community and, unfortunately many others, each of these is entitled to its own suffering, salvation and success. If hatreds were organisms, they would have alleles in common, but they are not genetic clones. Racial bias is not homophobia is not misogyny is not anti-Semitism; their pain is not our pain, except, of course, for those Jews who are black or brown or queer or women.

A second reason for caution: there is a point when too much universalism can overly and dangerously dilute a particular cruelty or further afflict a specific victimized class. While Obama’s approach this past January was, I think rightly, to express universal solidarity with a particular people by saying “we are all Jews,” that same day, the new Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau released a statement for his first International Holocaust Remembrance Day – without ever mentioning Jews. And there was a piece in a few months back detailing reticence or even refusal, in certain progressive circles, to acknowledge Jewish ethnicity. For example, some have taken to describing the Holocaust as “White-on-White crime.” So we see the erosion of intellectual rigor and historical awareness to the point where some cannot accept both the reality of Jewish white privilege in 21st Century America and the fact that Hitler’s genocide was the very definition of ethnic cleansing against non-Aryans, that is non-Whites.

James Kirchik had a provocative piece in Tablet earlier this week titled “The Holocaust Without Jews.” He writes, “…it’s noteworthy how often the greatest crime in human history is casually manipulated by those who purport to be concerned with ‘oppression.’ But,” he explains, for some, “the Holocaust’s meaning is always and necessarily to be found in its ‘universalism.’ According to this historical interpretation, the evil of the Nazis can be located in their abandonment of the European cosmopolitan tradition and descent into bestial particularism and nationalism—the very attributes that Israel, foremost among the nations, is charged with embodying today. This sleight-of-hand has the miraculous effect of clouding the causes of the Holocaust so that anti-Semitism is relegated to a background role, if it is mentioned at all.” He continues, “Harping on the fact of six million dead Jews, then, becomes weirdly tribal, even Nazi-like; asserting Jewish peoplehood is too close to asserting Aryan-ness…. It doesn’t matter that there is no Israeli Auschwitz, or anything even approaching it; Israel is the carrier of the European disease that wise Europeans have transcended through their enormous, Christ-like suffering….”

Which brings us full circle back to Godwin’s Law and this Shabbat between Holocaust Remembrance day and Israeli Memorial Day. Because when the Shoah becomes, too much, a symbol of universal human oppression, and not, first and foremost, remembrance of particular Jewish suffering, it is too easily wielded as a cudgel in any discussion, the coup de gràce of any argument. “He’s a Nazi.” “She’s a Nazi.” To quote the great Tom Lehrer: “Nazi Schmazi!” If Nazis aren’t just Nazis, then anyone can be one, including, perversely, Jews. That’s the schadenfreude at work in the Global BDS Movement when it takes root in non-Muslim populations, and it’s a seductive danger to impressionable progressively-minded Jews who, in attempting to apply ethical lessons and values from Jewish tradition – usually with noble intent – find themselves ill equipped to fully grasp the ways in which anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are bleeding into one another. Perhaps we have been all too successful in conveying the universalistic themes of Pesach? As Nirenberg explains in his magnum opus Anti- Judaism: there is real danger when Jewish suffering becomes disconnected from actual Jews. Paradoxically, the erasure of difference leads inexorably to the deletion of particular people. Sometimes us. Sometimes others.

And that’s why, I think, the Torah is so concerned with Canaanite behavior. Preserving Jewish identity isn’t really about tribal chauvinism (thought I admit there’s some of that); it’s also about honoring our story, our traditions, our culture and ethnic proclivities. Rabbi Sacks suggests we honor these things by doing (ma’aseh) – through halacha. “Great moments change history,” he writes (5776 Torah commentary on Acharei Mot). “But what changes us is the unspectacular habit of doing certain acts again and again until they reconfigure the brain and change our habits of the heart. We are shaped by the rituals we repeatedly perform.”

But that’s also true for the wrong sort of habitual behavior. On the three words u’vechukoteihem lo teileichu, and don’t follow (don’t do the halacha) of [Canaanite] laws, Ibn Ezra, the 12th century Spanish luminary, offers the following, she’lo yargil adam lalechet baderech hazeh, “a person should avoid walking a particular [read: destructive] path” ad sh’yehiyeh lo chok, “so much that it becomes a rule for him.” We know all too well that habit cuts both ways. And righteous living requires vigilance as much to avoid the wrong behaviors as it does to internalize the right ones. In Egypt we were slaves. The problem wasn’t getting the Egyptians to like us, understand us, value us. We were tools for them, chattel to be bought and sold. But in Canaan we will face a different challenge. As free people we will want to fit in. It’s human nature. The danger, implies Ibn Ezra, isn’t just that they will hate us, for with God’s help, we will be able to defend ourselves. And, if not, we cannot blame ourselves for the bigotry of others and the tyranny of tyrants. The more insidious danger is that we will hate us, or at least that we’ll be ashamed to be us, that in trying to be less us we will unmake the very identity which lead to our redemption, obscure and then obliterate the very story which makes us who we are. Our Judaism must never become a mere footnote to our humanity.

Hevre, this Shabbat isn’t just the one between Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron/Yom Ha’atzmaut. It’s another liminal moment. Today is the 14th Day of the Omer, the counting of Barley which links Pesach to . Pesach, as we know is about freedom. Shavuot is the anniversary of Matan Torah, the responsibility that comes with the gift of Torah. And what is Torah? Quite simply the story of us as refracted through the prism of Jewish thought and history and experienced through ma’aseh Yehudim, Jewish ritual and practice. The United States, despite the current election cycle, is a pretty good country, and we Jews have thrived here. But we must remember where we came from and always take an honest accounting of who we are and where we are. That’s the lesson of Yom HaShoah and, each year, as we creep farther from the actual event, it becomes even more important to know the story – what it means for the world, but, mostly, what it means for us.

Y’hi Zichram Baruch. May the memories of those who perished be for a blessing.