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2017

March 2017

HASHALOM

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OUT OF PERSPECTIVE

Try as I may, I cannot remember the stories I was read to as a child

at bedtime, back in the mother-land. My children won’t have this

problem if they grow up to be parents, because it is highly likely

they will read the same books to their children that they listened to.

Modern Hebrew is a relatively young, revived language, but already

there is a rich tradition of children’s classics that will be in vogue for

many generations to come. Many have been translated into English

(and other languages) but these translations do not do them justice

if I simply judge a book by its cover. I am referring amongst others

to works like:

(translated to “Raspberry Juice”) – a book that has

spawned Graduate degree-level research at local universities about

issues of self-identity (it’s about forest creatures trying to guess

what kind of mysterious new animal has come to live amongst

them, made more enigmatic by the animal hiding away in his house

and refusing to come out).

(translated to “Hot Corn”) – which must have the

most catchiest rhyme ever printed in modern Hebrew (it’s about

neighbourhood children singing and playing instruments on a hot

day, all whilst searching for mielies to snack on).

מעשה בחמישה בלונים (translated to “A Tale of Five Balloons”)

– which has a story-line designed to help toddlers deal with material

loss (if only everything could be as easily replaced as a balloon). It

also teaches small kids about colours, which may actually be its

primary message.

אבא עושה בושות(translated to “My father always embarrasses

me”) – a Meir Shalev classic, and my personal favourite, about a

young boy, Ephraim, who is embarrassed by his awkward-behaving

dad (don’t worry though, fatherly-wisdom triumphs in the end).

Interestingly, in an interview I heard with Shalev, he was very clear

that it took him a lot longer to write a children’s story, to get the

rhyming sequence and language perfect.

I could list many more, but perhaps there is one Hebrew children’s

classic that captures the melting-pot of the ingathering of exiles

that is Israeli society, and remains as relevant today as it was when

it was published initially in 1959. I am referring to

“A Flat for Rent”, written by Leah Goldberg. She was something of

a giant in the pioneering Hebrew literary scene last century, being a

poet, author, playwright, translator, and literature researcher. She

earned PhD’s from both Berlin and Bonn universities, translated

War

and Peace

into Hebrew, and won the Israel prize for literature in 1970

(the year of her death). Earlier, she settled in Tel Aviv in 1935 aged 24,

so she was well placed to write about the history she lived through.

The story is about the animal tenants of a five-story apartment

building looking for a new resident for the top-story flat, previously

occupied by a mouse, who suddenly left. On the ground floor lives

a fat hen, on the second floor a tidy black cat, on the third floor a

busy cuckoo bird, and on the fourth floor a voracious squirrel. The

fun starts when the potential tenants come and look at the flat:

each seems to like it, but each one also seems to have reservations

about the other tenants. The industrious ant won’t live anywhere

near the lazy hen, a motherly rabbit won’t live with the cuckoo bird

who neglects her children, a sophisticated, singing nightingale can’t

handle the noise from the nut-cracking squirrel, and worst of all,

a bigoted white pig won’t live with the cat because she is black.

One may interpret the text as a manifestation of social problems

that continue to persist: stereotypes, presumptuous judgements,

intolerance and blatant racism. Add to that the many possibilities

of who the animals actually represent in the gamut of Israeli

immigrant-society, and one really does have a story for all the ages.

Personally, I interpret the nightingale to symbolise the educated

European Ashkenazi elite and the squirrel to have arrived from an

Arab-speaking country, with a penchant for eating roasted nuts and

seeds. In the end (sorry for the spoiler), a dove comes along, finds

favour and merit in all the neighbours, and expresses a desire to

move in and live in harmony.

And speaking of doves, a book that has just been published to

commemorate the jubilee of Jerusalem’s reunification this year, is

כנפי

גורן בדרך לכתל המערבי. It’s so new, I couldn’t find

an official translation, so I’ll offer one: “On thewings of a dove: Rav Goren

heading to the Western Wall”. It was commissioned by the Religious

education administration, and builds heavily on the iconic images of the

Six Day War, when the paratroopers secured the Kotel in Israeli hands.

The story is from the perspective of two doves residing in the Jewish

quarter of Old City. They are startled by approaching noise and gunfire,

and fly up to see a bearded soldier grasping a Sefar Torah in one hand,

and a clutching a shofar in his other. This was Rav Shlomo Goren, the

first head of the Military Rabbinate of the IDF. The doves witness him

dashing through the Old City, sounding the shofar and leading the first

Jewish prayers at the Kotel since 1948. Rav Goren’s influence on the IDF

was immense, and his giant legacy as a Paratrooper, (he had a rank of

Major-General), Rabbi, Writer and Rosh Yeshiva makes it likely this book

will become a classic for future generations of Israeli children.

Lailatov... bedtime tales

David Arkin

HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE

WITHOUT JEWS

Prof Antony Arkin

EDITORIAL

On November 1, 2005, 60 years after the end of World War II, the

UN General Assembly voted unanimously to establish an annual

International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of

the Holocaust. The designated date was January 27, the day in 1945

that the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz, where 1.1 million

people were killed, a million of them Jews. As the resolution put it

“the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless

members of other minorities would forever be a warning to all people

of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice”.

This year President Trump’s statement marking international

Holocaust Remembrance Day deliberately omitted mentioning

Jews. The message included “victims, survivors and heroes of the

Holocaust”. It casts such a singular focus on the universal lessons of

the Holocaust that the fact that Nazi ideology specifically targeted

the Jewish people gets lost.

This approach is not unique. Baroness Catherine Ashton, then High

Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs issued an

official statement on Holocaust Memorial Day 2014 that did not

once mention Jews or anti-semitism. It spoke of “victims” and those

“brutally murdered”, calling the events a “tragedy”.

The same thing happened two years later in 2016 when Canadian

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Holocaust Day statement

memorialized “the millions of victims murdered during the Holocaust”

without any specific historical reference to the annihilation of the

Jews. Trump’s statement then is just the latest example of Holocaust

memory that forgets the identity of the actual victims.

In contrast, in ElieWiesel’s classicmemoir of Holocaust remembrance,

Night

, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor argued

“the Holocaust was a war against the Jews in which not all victims

were Jews, but all Jews were targeted victims”. “An entire people

were sentenced to death for being”. It was only the Jews who were

condemned to extinction.

As Wiesel went on to remind us, Jews were murdered at Auschwitz

because of anti-semitism, but anti-semitism did not die at Auschwitz.

Irwin Cotler in The

Jerusalem Post

argued this Jew hatred “while it

begins with Jews does not end with Jews”. It remains the canary in

the mineshaft of global evil that threatens us all. Trump’s statement

then was classic soft-core denial. As Prof Deborah Lipstadt put it the

White House attempted to de-Judaize the Holocaust.

Fortunately there are world leaders who do not lose track of the

particular in the search for the universal. One is Antonio Guterres, the

newly elected Secretary-General of the UN. Speaking at the world

body’s observance of Holocaust Memorial Day this year he defined

the Holocaust as “a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish

people and so many others”.

Another is Irina Bokova, who has courageously condemned the

efforts of UNESCO, the organization she heads, to erase Jewish

historical ties to Jerusalem. Her message for Holocaust Memorial

Day 2017 explicitly condemns “the crimes committed out of racist

and anti-semitic hatred”. She points out that anti-semitism can

change its face from religious to social, racial and political, but it is

still the same hatred that wounds and kills. She continued that “the

fight against all forms of anti-semitism, racism and intolerance is the

foundation of the respect for the rights of all”.

Contact: Robyn Bradley P.O. Box 10797 Marine Parade 4056

Production Manager: Mrs Robyn Bradley

The views expressed in the pages of Hashalom are not necessarily those of the

Editorial Board or any other organisation or religious body unless otherwise

individual.

Hashalom Editorial Board:

Editor: Prof Antony Arkin

Sub Editor: Mr Colin Plen

Editorial Board: Mrs Mikki Norton, Mrs Michelle Campbell

Commitee: Dr Issy Fisher, Ms Diane McColl, Mrs Lauren Shapiro

Designed by RBG Studios, email: rowan@rbgstudios.co.za

Notice to Organisations/Contributors:

All material to be submitted by email to

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DEADLINE FOR THE APRIL ISSUE: 6 March 2017