HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE AWARENESS WEEK
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THE 28TH ANNUAL ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE:
REMEMBERING THE SHOAH:
DAVID NIRENBERG ON HISTORICAL ANTI-JUDAISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM TODAY
A CONVERSATION WITH ESTHER ADLER
BY SIMON RABINOVITCH
This year’s Morton Lecture featured David Nirenberg, Dean of the Divinity School and Professor of History at the University of Chicago. Professor Nirenberg is one of the world’s leading scholars of medieval history, and specializes in the relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval and early modern Europe. He is also the author of the important and widely influential book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. In a public (online) event on April 7 as part of Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week, the Northeastern community was deeply enriched by Professor Nirenberg’s lecture, Does the Past History of Anti-Semitism Tell Us Anything about its Future? In his lecture, Professor Nirenberg explored the question of whether anti-Semitism, as it exists in a given place and time, can be understood without relating it to the longer history of anti-Judaism. His starting point for the discussion was the philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, who saw the anti-Semitism she witnessed in Europe in the 1930s as a product of immediate economic and social realities, disconnected from the history of ideas. As a corrective to Arendt, Nirenberg traced in his lecture the ways that Jews and Judaism have been, and are still, used to explain the world—what anxieties different societies project onto Jews, real or imagined. Nirenberg’s thesis in the Morton Lecture, as in AntiJudaism: The Western Tradition, was that since the rise of Christianity, European societies have described elements within them that they fear, or desire to overcome, as “Jewish.” The Gospels presented Judaism as a fundamentally confused way to see the world; early Christian descriptions of the Jews as blind (to the truth) or associated with the devil would have, according to Nirenberg, a long future. Jews also became a convenient screen to project social anxieties about money and debt, the best example being Shakespeare’s character Shylock. Shakespeare may have written the play The Merchant of Venice, without ever having met a
Jew, but that did not prevent opponents to Jewish emancipation in nineteenth-century England from using Shylock as an illustration of why one should fear Jewish political rights. The idea that Jews worship the god of money was one picked up and propagated most famously by Karl Marx. His book Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition came out in 2013, and in his lecture Professor Nirenberg related the ideas he developed there to much that has transpired since. In sum, many of the concepts we use to think about the world—our habits of thought—are still laden with anti-Judaism. Nirenberg sees this in the language deployed by the alt-right movement in the United States, in allusions to George Soros by politicians in Hungary and Eastern Europe, and in the fixation with Israel in societies around the globe where few-to-no Jews live. In all of these examples, Jews and Judaism stand in as an imagined agent for what is seen to threaten one’s own society. This delusion infected the murderer at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, who blamed Jews for a host of what he considered American ills, not least immigration. Professor Nirenberg’s lecture ignited a lively conversation with the audience. People were particularly interested in the connection between—or distinction from—anti-Semitism and forms of racial prejudice. Nirenberg ended his lecture by proposing that the best antidote to anti-Semitism is to acknowledge the degree to which anti-Judaism can influence our current thinking. For reasons of self-interest, I like the idea that historians can play a role in fighting anti-Semitism, and I take seriously Nirenberg’s warning that if we focus too much on specific examples of anti-Semitism in isolation, we risk obscuring the continuities in how our societies think about Judaism. For educators and others who want to raise our collective historical consciousness, David Nirenberg provides us with important tools to do so. Simon Rabinovitch is Associate Professor of History and core faculty in the Jewish Studies Program.
BY MORGAN KNIGHT
Poet, teacher, and survivor Esther Adler spoke via Zoom to students, staff, and members of our community this past Yom HaShoah, as a culmination of Northeastern’s annual Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week. Professor Lori Lefkovitz introduced Adler, whom she has known for more than half a century; Adler was her 3rd and 5th grade teacher in Hebrew School. Lefkovitz’s introduction expressed Adler’s philosophy, which focuses on acknowledging and memorializing grief to find the beauty and celebration of life. Even from behind a computer screen, 97-yearold Esther Adler’s wit, humility, and unfathomable knowledge was potent as she described her own personal history. Adler escaped Germany at only 15 years old, seeking refuge with a Jewish youth group and ending up in Palestine. Her early escape from Nazi Germany is pivotal to her identity as a “survivor,” which she explained as she described the increasing hostility in her home city of Breslau after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. Even from a young age, Adler knew that what was happening was not right, that something horrifying was on the horizon. Living in a densely-Jewish-populated region, Esther experienced the early forms of torture and indoctrination that the Nazis spread throughout Germany even before the mass transportation to camps began. Loudspeakers were placed throughout her neighborhood, constantly playing a stream of Hitler’s speeches down streets and alleys; any time Adler was outdoors, she could hear the evil in his voice. As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I have spent my entire life hearing and learning from survivors, and was honored and intrigued to hear Adler’s perspective, as she escaped Germany before she could be interned in a concentration camp. Adler stated that she grapples with the idea of calling herself “a survivor,” an identity that she used to ascribe exclusively to those who suffered in camps and ghettos. Adler’s perspective changed when Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, said that “anyone who lived under Hitler’s regime is entitled to the designation of survivor.”
“I want to start by telling you that I don’t like to use the word ‘Holocaust;’ I like to use the word ‘Shoah,’” Adler said to begin her story. While the word ‘holocaust’ is Greek, meaning ‘burnt offering,’ Shoah is a Biblical term (Isaiah 10:3) meaning ‘catastrophic destruction.’ Adler acknowledged that tragically and undeniably, ‘burnt offering’ was an accurate description of the genocide, but prefers Shoah as a linguistic recognition of the tragedy. Adler immediately reminded me of my grandmother—a survivor who, like Adler, spoke English sprinkled with Yiddish and stood under 5 feet tall. As I grow older, and enter my personal study of the Holocaust on a deeper level, I am endlessly moved by the people, like my own grandparents and Adler, who, within their identity as survivors, stand as representatives of lives well lived against all odds. Through retelling her own story, Adler serves as an
97-YEAR-OLD ESTHER ADLER’S WIT, HUMILITY, AND UNFATHOMABLE KNOWLEDGE WAS POTENT AS SHE DESCRIBED HER OWN PERSONAL HISTORY embodiment of the relationship between grief and beauty. In her words and through her writing, she explains the duality of the two extremes, resolving that witnessing the deepest horrors allows her to experience and appreciate the joys of life at a greater level. Adler calls for remembrance and acknowledgment of the grief of her generation and their descendants, in order to stress that “never again” is a call to action. As her parting words, Adler reminded us to speak to and listen to survivors while they are with us, and carry on the dialogue created on Yom HaShoah into our personal lives and practices of remembrance. Esther Adler’s full works, including Best Friends: A Bond that Survived Hitler, and Poems of Sorrow, Solace, and Spirituality, are available on Amazon, and serve as a testament to her life as a teacher and storyteller dedicated to remembering the Shoah. Morgan Knight ’22 is majoring in Political Science and minoring in Jewish Studies, Law & Public Policy, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is the 2021 Ruderman Scholar. See page 15.
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