I’m starting with the assumption that you’re intelligent enough to understand that, when you say, “Most Jews I know are more concerned about their fancy shoes and pricey cars than about the holocaust, their Jewish identity or the current reality of Israel,” that you can see what is offensive about that, and you’re just ignoring that fact in order to deny culpability for your words.
I understand the context in which that statement was being made. I understand the point you claim you were trying to get across (that some Jews who milk the Holocaust are not indicative of the entire Jewish community). That still doesn’t excuse the sentence quoted above.
“I am sensitive to Jews and their issues” sounds about right for me. The alternative was the much mocked and maligned “I have some friends that are Jewish”
And in other news relevant to the OP, guess what? “Historian” and Holocaust-denier David Irving is making a comeback, with an upcoming tour of British cities and a planned series of new books.
“…drinking tea on the sofa of a 10-bedroom house he has begun renting near Windsor, Mr Irving says that his views on the Holocaust have crystallised rather than changed. He says that he believes the Jews were responsible for what happened to them during the second world war and that the “Jewish problem” was responsible for nearly all the wars of the past 100 years.”
Gee, I’m glad Sapo left that unsaid. I’m uncertain of the “you” that her or his comments are directed to. Is someone here fighting a stereotype? Whoever you are, Sapo almost felt some restraint about insulting you, but thought better of it.
Returning to the OP for a moment:
What makes you think that Jews are the only ones that haven’t gotten over the Holocaust? Neither have I. I grew up in a small town in the South and didn’t even know a Jew until I was grown. I didn’t know about the Holocaust until then either. It just wasn’t talked about by anyone I knew.
When I became a teacher, I made certain that none of my students left my classroom as ignorant as I had been in high school.
Although I am aware that other such horrors continue, it was the genocide of WWII that made me realize two things: 1) What human beings are capable of doing to each other and 2) How quickly a decent society can deteriorate into one ruled by immoral tyrants who still seduce with words like freedom and patriotism.
The first realization made me a pacifist, although I think that would have happened anyway. The second made me an activist.
I don’t know that we have any business determining when someone should be getting over something anyway. People are different. Some are quick to put the past behind them. Others naturally feel things more intensely. Who’s to judge if one way is correct and the other wrong?
Maybe there’s a good reason why some of you have a need to dictate to others, tell them what they should feel, stereotype them, put them down, and make generalizations about them. But then, maybe doing so really is as ignorant and provincial as it appears.
You had me up until this question, which I consider to be grossly insensitive and, yes, antisemitic. Who the fuck are you, to expect people to “let go” of something of that magnitude? Do you also expect blacks to “let go” of slavery and segregation?
They’re not over it. I was talking to my German roommate about this sort of thing, and she tells me that many Germans feel uncomfortable discussing the Nazi regime because there’s a sense of collective guilt about the whole thing.
Ick … I’m coming to this really late, so it probably won’t have any bearing on the lynching going on (particularly as I usually have on my Magical Invisibility Suit [sub]tm[/sub] while posting), but I can say, categorically, as someone who has met Kambuckta, and knows where she is coming from, that she is one of the least prejudiced people around, and that she is certainly not Anti-Semitic … even when it comes to me! And I think the lesson here, really, is that it’s impossible to get a true sense of what someone’s weltanschauung from a single post. With all due respects to other posters here, comparing her to David Fucking Irving is so far out of line, it’s not even of this world.
Perhaps you can let her know, then, Junior Spaceman, that if she doesn’t want to appear as somewhat narrow-minded, it might be best to avoid placement of sentences like “At what point in history or the family tree do past legitimate grievances become bullshit sentimental point-scoring?” in the same post as: “When will the Jewish community let the Holocaust go?” David Irving stuff, no. Guaranteed red-button material, yes.
Actually now that you say it, this explains a lot. I sometimes wonder how men who each deserve their 15 minutes as the most despised man in America were permitted to reach adulthood in freedom. Perle and Wolfowitz, Feith and Abramoff; perhaps it is the protected status?
Get over the Holocaust? No thanks. I don’t think we’ll do that. If we get over what happened, it’ll happen to us again. Those who forget history are doomed to have it repeated on them.
We Jews have a long history of getting over things. Pogroms? Got over them. Explusions? Got over them too. Every time something bad was done to us we buried our dead, built new homes, and went on with living just as we had before. Constantly ignoring the past made something like the Holocaust nearly inevitable.
One of those was enough.
So now were’s trying something new: it’s called Not Getting Over It. So far, it seems to be working.
A me-too to Alessan’s post: what part of “Never again” do you not understand?
I may be frustrated that Holocaust studies seems to take so much time in my kids’ religious schools that they get a short shrift to many other other aspects of Jewish history, philosophy, and even Torah study. I may think that the balance is a bit off. I may think that “Never again” needs to be understood as not talking just about us, but understanding how we all have the potential to commit great evil within us and working towards how to guard against preventing that evil from becoming manifest against any “other”, not just against us. The world has a lot to learn still in that regard. But “get over it”? Nope. Not now. Not ever.
Btw, I have this great new pair of shoes and I know where I’d like to put the point of one of them.
When will the Native Americans get over losing all their land to Europeans? I mean, there are still plenty of NAs around, right? So what’s the big deal?
Yeah, I’m with everyone else who’s saying, “I don’t give a fuck how you are in ‘real life;’ on here, you’re being a shithead.”
I wouldn’t surprised if the answer to your last question is an emphatic yes, so I don’t think referencing blacks and their sensitivities adds the rhetorical punch you are aiming for here.
That goes to everyone else who has mentioned blacks in this thread. Anyone who has a problem with Jews talking about the Holocaust will probably also have a problem with blacks talking about slavery and segregation. So yall might want to find something else to hang your hats on. Just sayin’.
Most people seem to have focused on the time element. But the OP also raised the issue of the woman’s Jewish identity:
In my opinion, if somebody is Jewish enough that the Nazis would have killed them if they had had the chance, then they’re Jewish enough to take the Holocaust personally.
The Holocaust was an ethnic cleansing, not a religious purge. Her lack of outward devotion to her religion would not have saved her from the camps - neither, for that matter would conversion to another religion have helped. Jews were persecuted by the Nazis as an inferior race, not for any issues with their faith.
