Can we be done with Jewish exceptionalism, please?

This is a response to Evan Krasner’s Why is Yom HaShoah not recognized by my high school?, which was posted yesterday on this blog.

Evan asks an important question:

How could a school that is mostly comprised of Jewish students not commemorate Yom HaShoah?

This certainly seems odd, if for no other reason than the usual importance of the Holocaust in Jewish education.

A private school that is mostly funded by parents of students that are Jewish, should have at least one assembly commemorating the Holocaust.

Don’t know if I like the use of the term “should”, but it’s entirely within Evan’s right to call for better Holocaust education based on the will of the school’s supporters and constituents.  He also describes a strong family connection to the Holocaust, and I deeply sympathize with his feeling that his family’s memory is being done a disservice.  If this were the sum of Evan’s argument, I’d have little quarrel with it.  But he leaves behind his compelling reasons for better Holocaust-related programming for ones I find far less palatable, discussing what appear to be larger problems he perceives in the school’s interest in Jewish issues.

During my sophomore year of high school, there was a debate scheduled that was rightly cancelled due to the fact that there were two Palestinians debating one another, as opposed to an Israeli debating a Palestinian, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This seems rather irrelevant to Holocaust education, but I would like to point out that “Palestinians” don’t all think the same thing, and the notion that Jews can learn nothing from two Palestinians debating is rather offensive.  The idea that “Israelis” think one thing and “Palestinians” think another is largely responsible for the social and political gridlock we’re trying to break out of.  Pretending that there are two monolithic sides does nothing to address the issues, it only further entrenches the concept of the conflict as irresolvable.

But I digress.

Jews relate to the Holocaust the same way that many African-Americans associate slavery with their painful past.

Huge generalization.  Regardless of its (highly debatable) accuracy, nothing good ever comes of comparing tragedies.

But the mass murder of 6 million Jews is a much more recent event than the abolishment of slavery in the United States.

This would be part of the “if the school’s celebrating Black History Month, MLK day, and other events commemorating important aspects of black history, they should do the same for Jews” argument.  It’s a good point.

The persecution of African Americans that took place during the Civil Rights Movement is more recent than the Holocaust but the two events are incomparable.

Full stop.  There are two big problems with this.  The more technical of the two is that it makes it sound like post-emancipation blacks in America faced discrimination and poor treatment only during the period classically thought of as “the civil rights movement”, that is, the 50s and 60s.  Let’s not forget the century of legalized discrimination, terror, and death that preceded it, which is in fact quite similar to what Jews endured before and during the Holocaust.

But, to return to the “comparing tragedies” point I previously alluded to, the larger issue is that when one persecuted group tries to one-up another, we get self-victimization, demands for unreasonable reparations, and a general feeling of entitlement.  Personally, I’ve had quite enough of Jews demanding special treatment because of the Holocaust.  I’m not about to go all Finkelstein on Evan and claim that these are crocodile tears (I think that’s demeaning and ignores the personal tragedy that many Jews face with respect to Holocaust history), but I would really like it if we stopped using the Holocaust as evidence to prove a point.  It was a horrible and inhuman tragedy, enabled by the silence of the rest of the world.  So was the Armenian genocide.  So is genocide in Darfur.  Let’s move on and get serious about “never again”, instead of continuing to argue about how our tragedy was better than everyone else’s.  It’s not the (again highly debatable) accuracy of that claim, it’s the making of the claim itself that’s the problem.

Even though Jews are considered to be white or Caucasian, the fact of the matter is that they are just as much a minority as African Americans.

This is not “the fact of the matter”, it’s an issue of race and ethnicity, a topic highly related to class and social standing in this country and elsewhere.  It’s unfair to assume that all Jews feel the same way about their racial identity (and the practice of calling [usually white] Jews a “different race” imparts some degree of non-belonging on non-white Jews).

The fact of the matter is that the Jewish people have been equally persecuted if not more so than many other minority groups.

And here we come to the ultimate embodiment of everything that is wrong with Jewish Holocaust awareness.  Instead of being uniquely sensitive to the concerns and tragedies of other groups, we’ve become self-satisfied and pretentious.  “Our tragedy was worse than yours”, we say.  Yes, we have been persecuted.  We are not alone.  My ultimate vision of Holocaust education is one that teaches Jews not that we are different from all other people, but that we are the same.  All people have suffered discrimination, and it’s time for Jews to let the memory of the Holocaust drive us to find common purpose with every person who struggles for social justice and equality.  The memory of those who were killed, whether in gas chambers or in lynchings, demands nothing less.