12 minute read
Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Week
THE 28TH ANNUAL ROBERT SALOMON MORTON LECTURE:
DAVID NIRENBERG ON HISTORICAL ANTI-JUDAISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM TODAY
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.
REMEMBERING THE SHOAH:
A CONVERSATION WITH ESTHER ADLER
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
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.
This spring, the Jewish Studies Program cosponsored an eight-part public Sunday seminar series Re-Envisioning the Middle East Ecosystem: Desert Ecology and Environmental Diplomacy. Collaborating with directors, faculty, and alumni from the Arava Institute and Kibbutz Lotan, the program was inspired by a desire to provide some of the educational richness that Northeastern University students would have enjoyed on the Dialogue of Civilization programs to Israel that had been suspended because of the global pandemic. The planning committee, which included Professor Lori Lefkovitz, met weekly for many months to design and implement the series. This open-to-all series of seminars (which convened by Zoom for two hours on consecutive Sundays from February to May) focused on various aspects of sustainable living in the desert, with an emphasis on the Negev desert in Israel and on the relationship between desert ecology and environmental diplomacy, using the case of Israel/ Palestine. The purpose of the series was to introduce participants to cutting-edge scientific developments in desert ecology and ongoing cross-border environmental, peacebuilding collaborations.
The seminar series was organized by Mr. Fareed Mahameed (a graduate of the Arava Institute and educator in Israel/Palestine) and Dr. Rebeca Rosengaus (Associate Professor of Marine and Environmental Science at Northeastern University), and cosponsored by Northeastern University’s Humanities Center and Jewish Studies Program (College of Social Sciences and Humanities), the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences (College of Science), the Friends of the Arava and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in the Negev, and the Center for Creative Ecology at Kibbutz Lotan. Each session featured guest experts from diverse disciplines, cultures, religions, and backgrounds, whose topics included renewable energy, water management, conservation, biomimicry, and desert ecology, with a special focus on cross-border collaborative environmental efforts through which sustainable living can be achieved in the desert regions of the Middle East. With over 400 registrations, there were 219 participants, 54 of whom earned certificates of completion for having attended seven or more seminars. Through this series, we hope to have contributed to building an international community of like-minded young people interested in sustainable living, diplomacy, public policy, and environmental activism. We also hope that some of the dozens of Northeastern students who took part will be inspired to take one of the Dialogue of Civilization courses in Israel in the summer of 2022.
A STUDENT REFLECTION ON THE DESERT ECOLOGY SERIES
BY SOPHIA COUTO
The desert ecology series was a fascinating and thorough experience in which participants were able to learn in depth about the Middle East ecosystem and ongoing progress towards a more sustainable future. Among the series co-sponsors was the Arava Institute, an Israeli research institute that strives to educate students about environmentalism and sustainability studies in order to adapt to the changing world. The Arava Institute has centers for transboundary water management, renewable energy and conservation, sustainable agriculture, arid socio-ecology, and even a Jordan-Israel community center for environment and research. The Institute is a leader in developing environmental education programs for students of all backgrounds, and provides an excellent wealth of research resources for students. Additionally, the Institute offers a variety of ways to get involved and participate in the collection of knowledge for anyone who is interested in becoming a better environmentally-educated citizen.
Regarding the desert ecology series in particular, the seminars covered topics ranging from climate change to biomimicry to water conservation efforts in the region. Through this series, an intersectional approach was taken in which the predominant religious beliefs and the unique ethnic identities of the region’s groups were discussed along with the wide range of environmental topics. The series zeroed in on the interaction between people and the environment, and new sustainable solutions to environmental problems being created every day. Combining a team of lecturers from the Middle East region, the series also featured guest lecturers as experts on particular topics in order to enrich the learning experience. Each of the guests contributed a unique set of experiences and perspective on the week’s topic, thereby adding not just information, but a new style of engaging with the material.
The unique part about this series was that it not only focused on environmentalism, but community and culture as well. For example, the fifth meeting was about transboundary environmental cooperation in the Middle East region, and how it can be augmented further. This considered the different groups in the region and how they are working together to achieve common goals. The last meeting of the series summarized all the ideas that had emerged throughout each week, and focused on how the principle of environmentalism can be applied in the real world using the abilities and talents of real people.
Through this series, I have learned an extensive amount about environmentalism at the ground level that I had not known previously. As an environmental science major with a passion for nature, I feel as if I am emerging from this series having gained knowledge about not just the science behind sustainability, but the people behind the efforts. There are communities
all across the Middle East and the rest of the world that are growing together and creating better ways of interacting with our environment. Goals that once seemed daunting are being achieved, perhaps not all at once, but steadily. Through cooperation we are able to reach heights that grow every day. One of the main ideas I am left with after this series is the awareness that progress is occurring today, and building off practices that have long been utilized, and our drive towards sustainability only increases in importance as time passes. More than that, though, I know that there is a place for all who are willing to learn, not only at the Arava Institute, but in communities everywhere as we work together towards a sustainable future.
Sophia Couto ’23 is a Northeastern student majoring in Environmental Science with a minor in Biology.
