Opuscula Israeli haredi Yom HaShoah acts Are beyond my ken

 

I don't understand Israel's "ultra-religious" mentality. According to several reports, 100 yeshiva boys celebrated Holocaust Remembrance Day with picnics in the park.

What causes me to wander is that the Shoah - the Holocaust - wiped out most of Europe's Jews (and nearly extinguished the Roma) while murdering the disabled and political dissidents.

Most of Israel's haredi are relatives of the people the Germans - with help from their Czech, French, Hungarian, and Polish friends - slaughtered. To be fair, the Germans, et al, didn't care if a Jew spoke Yiddish, wore payot and dressed as a Polish pan or spoke high German and dressed in the latest style - all were destined for the "Final Solution."

I understand why the haredim refuse to celebrate Israel Independence Day; like the Moslem states that surround Israel (save for Egypt and Jordan), the haredim don't acknowledge the Jewish state's existence. Only the messiah can restore political Israel and then only as a theocratic state, according to the denizens of Bene Brak, Mea Sharim and similar haredi neighborhoods.

But it's one thing to ignore an Israeli national holiday; it's something else altogether to make an effort to insult others as the yeshiva boys did in Jerusalem and - foolishly - in Bet Shean. Bet Shean is about 90 percent North African - Jews from Morocco, Algiers, Libya. These people take the memorial day seriously.

I admit that in the U.S., many - perhaps most - Americans tend to take advantage of Memorial Day and Veterans Day for picnics and frivolous activities. But while Americans died for the flag - and too many times for someone else's flag - we didn't lose millions to people whose sole raison d'etre was wiping out an entire population.

Roughly 12 million civilians died at the hands of the Germans and their friends; of that total, at least six million were Jews. Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were murdered simply because they were Jews or Roma.

So I am bewildered by the Ashkenazi haredim who take the occasion to thumb their noses at their fellow Jews who also lost people in the Shoah. I would be equally stunned to hear that Shas' haredim joined them at the picnics, for Mizrahi Jews also died at the German's hands or at the hands of the German's Muslim allies.

Bet Shean is an interesting place - most of my relatives are there - in that even though Israel treated new immigrants from North Africa poorly, the general population is proud to be Israeli.

According to the Times of Israel article, “Remembrance Day is your event, not ours,” one ultra-Orthodox man said. “If you keep the Sabbath then we will mark your events.” Another explained that nonreligious people often have barbecues on Saturdays which, for observant Jews, is a forbidden activity.

Mourning in Nissan

Making a mountain out of a mole hill

One of the Israeli haredi political party Shas’ sub-leaders (all of whom report to R. Ovadia Yosef), claim that "Holocaust Remembrance Day does not apply to haredi [ultra-Orthodox] Jews.”

According to an article in the Israel HaYom ( http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8537), Shas party Co-chairman Aryeh Deri said in an interview with haredi radio station Kol Barama set to air Thursday night said that “"Personally, I don't see any sanctity or distinctiveness in this day. Israel's Chief Rabbinate has designated the 10th of Tevet [the Hebrew month corresponding to December-January] as a general mourners' day, and that is they day when, religiously speaking, we remember the victims of the Holocaust.”

The month of Nissan, in which Passover falls, traditionally allows only limited mourning (death in immediate family excepted).

While Deri’s remarks, if accurately translated by Israel HaYom, are harsh, he does have a basis for his position.

Holocaust Remembrance Day 5773 (2013) was aligned with the beginning of the Warsaw (Poland) ghetto’s uprising. Deri challenged the date choice, noting there were other uprisings in other ghettos at different times.

According to the Israel HaYom article, Deri allegedly said "No one can come and tell us about the Holocaust. The Holocaust Remembrance Day that 'they' declared because of the Warsaw ghetto doesn't apply to us as haredi Jews," he said.

From my personal perspective, and while I might agree with Deri and the haredim regarding mourning during the month of Nissan, I contend that the holocaust indeed applies to Sefardim – a group Shas purports to represent - both directly and indirectly.

The nazis destroyed Sefardi communities throughout the Mediterranean region – Rhodes and Soloniki to name but two. According to a table at http://www.holocaustchronicle.org/holocaustappendices.html, 80 percent of all Greek Jews were murdered by the nazis; in Italy, “only” 20 percent of the Jewish population was murdered.

Map by worldatlas, copyright GraphicMaps.com

Indirectly, the nazis – with the enthusiastic help of the Muslims – managed to slaughter Jews in Iran, in Israel, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. While not round-ups a la Europe, the Muslims simply murdered Jews where they found them, similar to pogroms in Russia, the Ukraine, and elsewhere in that region.

My personal “bottom line”: While I would prefer the Holocaust Remembrance Day be linked to the Hebrew calendar, as is Israel Independence Day, and that the link be to a date in a month other than Nissan, Deri and his boss need to open their eyes to the fact that the holocaust was not “just” an Ashkenazi thing; indeed, it was not “just” a Jewish thing. See the table at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NAZIS.TAB1.1.GIF for a breakdown of the nazis’ victims and how they were “eliminated.”

It’s a shame that Deri and his fellow haredim can’t pick their fights a little more sanely. If the haredim are trying to recruit people to their side, to see their point of view, Deri’s remarks are counter-productive. The remarks can only serve to drive observant Jews farther from the haredi camp and to set fast the helonim in their opinion of the haredim.

This mountain, all things and timing considered, should have been left as a mole hill.