Rabbis for Human Rights (Rabbi Michael Schwartz and Steven Gerber)
Holocaust Remembrance Day memorializes the victims of the Nazis. Observance of this day, though, is also meant to inspire a response from us about how to ensure that such horrible atrocities never occur in our world again.
Noted philospher and theologian, Rabbi Emil Fackenheim z"l, taught that the Holocaust defies any attempt to locate meaning in it. Indeed, it would be scandalously disrespectful to the victims to "justify" their murder by extrapolating some higher meaning from the Shoah's happening, a blasphemy to find some purpose or reason to the presence of such radical evil in God's world and in the capability of human beings - created in God's own Image - both to enact such evil and to be victimized by it. And yet, Fackenheim noted, a particulalry Jewish response to the Shoah is nevertheless imperative. A universal response of all humanity to the Holocaust is no less obligatory.
It is interesting to note how two very different sets of "responses" to the Shoah are heard frequently amongst Jews here in Israel and around the world. These two different responses reflect a shared sense of urgent necessity in responding here today because of what happened there then. At the same time they demonstrate almost opposite worldviews and understandings of Israel's purpose, and lead toward totally inverse political perspectives and often contradictory activist involvements.
One response is that, essentially, Israel must do anything it wants or needs to do in order to defend itself from hateful enemies set on perpetrating a second holocaust by destroying both the Jewish State and the Jewish People along with it.
The other response is that precisely because of our experience as Jews in the Holocaust and through our history littered with injustice and tragedy, we ourselves must make sure that Israel of all places is a nation that stringently safeguards human rights even in the most difficult of circumstances and establishes, in the words of Israel's Declaration of Independence, a nation that "foster[s] the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; [a nation] based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel." Indeed, both the physical and spiritual security of the Jewish People and the State of Israel is best guaranteed by the strength of Israel's democracy and the rule of just law, its commitment to human rights, and - ultimately - to the achievement of peace.
Both these responses recognize the absolute importance of protecting the Jewish People and preventing a second Holocaust. In fact, it was the same Rabbi Fackenheim who argued that from the experience of the Holocaust was heard a "614th commandment" in addition to the 613 traditionally found in the Torah: We are commanded not to give Hitler posthumous victories, neither by perishing as a People, by forgetting what was done to us, by denying or despairing of God, nor by ceasing to work towards making the earth a place of holiness, the Kingdom of God. Our failure to observe this new 614th commandment would transform the world into a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted.
Are these two types of responses to the Holocaust commonly heard amongst Jews today compatible with one another? Does one response or the other better answer the requirements of the 614th commandment? Must some "middle ground" be found, or must we choose one response or the other? How do we respond on this Holocaust Remembrance Day to the real threats that face us even as we wield considerable power and immense responsibility both to protect ourselves and to deal justly, righteously, and honestly with our neighbors, the Palestinians?
Perhaps we can now sense a 615th commandment, born of the 614th and the totality of the 613 before it: We must work to uphold the Torah of universal human rights.
Although the idea of universal human rights has precedents before the Holocaust, it is only after the Shoah, because of the Shoah, that humanity's collective feeling and understanding crystallized around the need for a system of international human rights law and protections. The Preamble to the UDHR clearly notes that the world's attempt to legislate for human rights values is the needed response of humanity to the Holocaust's "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind" Indeed, Rene Cassin - the French Jewish social democrat who played a leading role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) - observed during the UN General Assembly's debate on accepting the draft of the UDHR, that "something new has entered the world...the first document about moral value adopted by an assembly of the human community."
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, as we memorialize the myriad victims and recall their unimaginable suffering and degradation, Rabbis for Human Rights invites the worldwide Jewish community to consider its response to this "epoch-making event" in our recent history. The formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the international human rights conventions and laws based upon it, is the whole of humanity's best effort to ensure no Holocaust can ever happen again. Are the promotion and defense of universal human rights at the center of the Jewish community's response to the Holocaust as well?
In fact, many, many Jews the world over are dedicated human rights leaders, activists, and lawyers. Among these, Rabbis for Human Rights - North America (RHR-NA) is fighting human trafficking and slavery in the U.S. and continues to oppose U.S.- sponsored torture. In Israel, RHR is working for economic justice for Israelis, teaching IDF soldiers, students, and pre-military academy students about human rights obligations from the perspective of Jewish and Zionist values and teachings, and works actively in the field to prevent instances of human rights abuses of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Ariel Gros-Werter: Considering Collective Responsibility Through the Lens of Kristallnacht
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While the article reads about how much these Rabbis are doing for human rights, I just tend to see it as propaganda to eclipse the real atrocities being committed by the Israeli government
We all see a different world, a different issue, but the same objective: freedom.
Benjamin Netanyahu is correct in saying that the second holocaust must be prevented at all costs.
Check it out: http://www
Approximat
Who is changing the story and why?
Porajmos was the systematic attempt of Genocide of the Romani people (Gypsies). 14% of Poland's population at the time was Jewish- ethnic Poles and Slavs were treated no different.
It is true that the Holocaust was the systematic attempt of Genocide- but the Jewish people were not the only victims. And it should not be treated as such.
Mark Braverman explained in "FATAL EMBRACE" Walter Brueggeman
"From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught...t
http://www
The heart of the problem is the Jewish desire to live as do all other nations - and the refusal of all other nations to accept that Jews should be allowed to do so.
And through this, the real meaning of the horror of the Holocaust/
5. Only a minority of the perpetrato
One looks at this list (which could be expanded) and is hard put to find another catastroph
(From: Frackenhei
1. Fully one-third of the whole Jewish people was murdered; and since this included the most Jewish of Jews -- East European Jewry -- Jewish survival as a whole is gravely in doubt.
2. This murder was quite literally "extermina
3. This was because Jewish birth was sufficient cause to merit torture and death; whereas the "crime" of Poles and Russians was that there were too many of them, with the possible exception of Gypsies only Jews had committed the "crime" of existing at all.
4. The "Final Solution" was not a pragmatic project serving such ends as political power or economic greed. Nor was it the negative side of a positive or political fanaticism
"THE MOST JEWISH OF JEWS -- EAST EUROPEAN JEWRY --"
The first point: My Middle Eastern Jewish ancestors in the Muslim world were just as fervently religious as those you label "the most Jewish of Jews -- East European Jewry --".
The second: It is always very wrong for people to say “JEWISH SURVIVAL AS A WHOLE IS GRAVELY IN DOUBT.”
We must NEVER allow a disastrous confusion between PEOPLE and their SACRED SUPERSTITI
Here is a result of such a calamitous confusion:
"THERE HAVE BEEN TWO GREAT CRIMINALS IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE: HITLER AND HERZL. HITLER WANTED TO DESTROY THE BODY OF THE JEWISH NATION. HERZL WANTED TO KILL THE SOUL, WHICH IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE BODY."
Rabbi Amnon Yizhak
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MY BLASPHEMOU
In the East God Won - The high cost of organized ignorance.
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Holy Cows and Calves - Sacred superstiti
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ניפוץ אלילים - ביעור הבערות
Holy Heretics - Jesus, Maimonides
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Holocaust Haggadah - שואה
Delusion dealers blame the victims.
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But many of us are tired of aggressive Israel and it's blind supporters constantly using it to rationaliz
I think it dishonors those lost in WW 2 to USE their tragedy for politics and nationalis
This is happening in Congo now. How many speakers on holocaust remembranc
What about the Supreme Court letting ruling elites control FCC licenses and use those to scapegoat Latinos? Gays? Liberals? Muslims? And blame them for all the ills facing this country after 30-40 yrs of conservati
The spontaneou
Muslim Americans are having civil liberties taken away from them, largely outside of any public scrutiny just as started in 1933 against ethnic groups in Germany. We know how that ended, and should be circumspec
In any case, I would think anyone with a passing acquaintan
I shouldn't have exaggerate
Many people against this policy are Jewish. But our media seems too sympatheti
the common man around the world must stand up not in the army but in the protest march to make these abusers stop abusing their own people and stealing with no sense of guilt or remorse, Stalin, Moa, bush.
The Armenian nation commemorat
Members of the Armenian American community will join together with their Jewish-Ame
They will subvert the singular horror of the deliberate extinguish
The RHR should remember that the right to life is the pre-eminen
And the Rachels of this world need to remember that after 2000 years of Muslim massacres, destructio
This, too, shall pass.