What do Buddhists and Jews Have in Common? A Lot

By Andrew Blitman May 9, 2014

Judaism and Buddhism. The former is a monotheistic faith built on faith God, the Torah, and the idea of free will. Judaism emerged in the Levant around 3,300 years ago. The latter is a nontheistic and monastic religion that originated in India around 563 BCE. Its tenets are the teachings of Prince Siddhartha Gautama Buddha,…

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Can I Really Have a Bad Day if I’ve Never Lived in a Concentration Camp?

By Dani Plung May 1, 2014

On a scorching day, during my Holocaust studies trip to Poland in the summer of 2012, a fellow student and I wandered through Birkenau like ghosts, pale despite the fact that the July sun was burning our backs, pondering the same question. It was the same question that we, and several others of our peers…

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Paralyzed: Life-Savers and my Life Saver

By Rebeccca Pritzker April 28, 2014

A year-and-a-half hiding in an underground bunker with her mother. Trudging into the village to beg local residents for food scraps. Occasionally discovering berries in the nearby forest. This was Mrs. Lefman’s life during the Holocaust. As she spoke, she remained outwardly stoic, preventing her internal reactions from manifesting in tears. And meanwhile, she comforted…

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Spielberg’s Jews: Revisiting ‘Schindler’s List’ on Yom HaShoah

By John Propper April 7, 2013

It has been pointed out that director Steven Spielberg’s mainstream success has inspired a turn toward broad, “public interest” works. For Spielberg, pop-history and film preservation have taken precedent over purely artistic endeavors. If one were to mark this shift in Spielberg’s career, it likely started with the Holocaust drama “Schindler’s List,” for which the…

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The Exploitative Power of Fear Or: How Bibi Defiled Yom Hashoah

By smelamed April 12, 2010

In South Africa, there’s a conspiracy theory that has spread among the white population since the fall of Apartheid. It goes by many names: Uhuru, Operation Vula, Operation White Clean-up, and – in a nod to Nazi Germany – Night of the Long Knives (in Afrikaans, Die Nag van die Lang Messe).  What it says…

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