Kid can't read "Diary of Anne Frank"--guess why

Great Debates
101

** They killed the Roma, Sinti, Homosexuals, and Communists just as dead.

[shrugs]

They didn’t even start the process with the Jews. That came later.

** Um, no. Jewish people cannot be identified through genetics, appearance, or even culture. According to tradition, a person is a Jew if their lineage comes from a Jewish woman. The Nazis killed plenty of people who had no idea that they were “actually” Jewish – which only encouraged the idea that being Jewish should be determined that way. Logically, the position of the most devout Orthodox Jew and the most bigoted skinhead are equivalent, and (to my mind) equally abhorrent.

** Not necessarily. Judaism is (often self-contradictingly) considered to be a matter of lineage, ethnicity, culture, and religion. Although these are separate matters, they’re frequently mixed and confused.

** Since many “traditional” Jews believe they are a people Chosen by God to present certain ideas to the world (even at the expense of incredible persecution), yes. People who hold that ideology should recognize that what may be their most important gift to the world is now being eroded by their ideology.

** “Safe haven”? I object to giving every marginalized subculture its own territory and allowing the belief that they are separate and distinct grow. I don’t like segregationists, whether they’re Black, White, Jewish, Neo-Nazi, or any other group.

** I consider Malcolm X to have been a very intelligent and worthwhile man who furthered an evil cause. The same holds for you – except the “intelligent and worthwhile” parts. I don’t know enough about you to judge that. But your segregationist, separationist position – yes.

** Considering where that statement is coming from, I’m not particularly concerned about it.

102

“I object to giving every marginalized subculture its own territory and allowing the belief that they are separate and distinct grow.”
Ah, yes. Now Jews (and apparently Kurds, Armenians, Macedonians etc.) are “subcultures”, who deeply offend TVAA by their group identification and/or desire for a separate plot of land as part of their goal of escaping persecution.

Thankfully, babe, this is not your choice to make.

103

I consider Malcolm X’s failure to induce black people to stop associating themselves with whites to be a wonderful thing. How is the “desire for a homeland” appropriate for Jews but not blacks? (Or do you agree with Mr. X that white people and black people shouldn’t live together?)

104

Your rant is indeed OT. I only posted that bit as an example of how to deal with things going on in school you disagree with – let your kid attend the school and let them teach it, but teach it the way you think it should be taught to your kid.

As for dealing with the issues you raised in your rant, definitely something for another thread – but hey, I’m all for fighting ignorance elsewhere.

105

Krok,

So let us take your Kansas example. Say I lived in Kansas. I would be politically active to change that policy. I’d have lost. I would then make sure that my kids were educated about science on my own time or might remove my kids from the public school and pay for private education. (My public school won’t touch comparative religion til High School so I do that on my own.) I might move to another state. My kids’ education is my responsibilty as you say. But my having the last word would have to excercised by those means; the school would not teach evolution or the Big Bang to my kids at my bequest if the electorate spoke otherwise.

Now schools do sometimes make an exception as a concession to religious sensibilities. Herein the debate hinges on whether or not forcing kids to be exposed to that which the parents believes violates their religious views is forcing another religious POV upon them. I don’t think so, but it is a different issue entirely than allowing a denier to prevent history from being taught to their child in a public school.

106

This kind of thinking has me really worried about the future of the U.S. Next thing you know, parents will be excusing their children from class for teaching them about things like the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the Constitution, because they don’t believe these events actually occured, or because they conflict with some agenda of theirs.

The Holocaust is an easily verified historical FACT just like the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the Constitution. The problem is that schools are so afraid of being sued in the litigation-mad U.S. that they prefer to cave to some idiotic family’s requests. In Europe no child would ever be excused from attending a class discussing the Holocaust. In fact, in Germany it is a mandatory part of the curriculum. The parents at home could be vehement Neo-Nazis, and they can rage about it all being a hoax at home, but at school, children need to be taught the TRUTH. They can then make up their own minds about whether they want to believe in the mad ramblings of their parents or in verifiable facts. I am just astounded at how damned weak the American School system has become, that they would even allow something like this. I have a feeling the average American is getting stupider by the day, and less knowledgeable about history AND current events in slowly increasing steps.

Heck, there are still Holocaust survivors alive today. Maybe ammo52 should try to find one, and then take young Miss A. to visit a Holocaust survivor near his/her home and have them talk to her for a while. or maybe you should send her to the Netherlands to talk to me. My grandfather was in the Waffen SS (something no one in our family is proud of), and was executed by his comrades in arms for refusing to work at an extermination camp (I gues he had some scruples in the end). I can show her some private letters that can show her what that time was really like.

107

And what about the people who don’t want their children to be taught about the effectiveness of certain types of birth control? That’s just as much a fact as anything else.

Or evolution. Or the history of certain religions. Et cetera.

Haven’t you realized that the entire system was co-opted decades ago?

108

TVAA,

I’ll start off agreeing with you that the genocide of Romany (aka as Sinti and Gypsy) is given too little exposure. There are perhaps three factors that come into play: they were a much smaller population; their destruction was even more complete so few were left to bear witness and provide evidence; and the Romanies’ genocide is less likely to have had as much of an alteration to the history of the rest of the world. None of these are adequate excuses. The ability of some to be willfully ignorant of this destruction is further proof of how little we have learned.

On the rest, no surprise that I disagree. Jews learned in WWII that even if they self-identified as global citizens, or German, or otherwise, whether they felt that being Jewish was a religious choice, or an ethnic heritage, a cultural legacy, a tribal idenity, or a bloodline, that they could not trust the world (or TVAA) to do so in the same way. They cannot trust the world to be fair or just. In 1938 60% of Americans felt that the persecution of European Jews was their own fault. The attempted destruction of the Jewish people was nothing new; the passivity of others was nothing new, the scale and success of ithe destruction was. More than 36% of the world Jewish population was murdered in a few years.

The essence of what Jews have learned from HaShoah is in a famous Jewish saying (Hillel): “If I am not for myself who will be for me, if I am only for myself then what am I, and if not now, when?”

Your analogy to Malcolm X is plain silly. Most who support Israel have no desire for all Jews to live seperate from all others. And nice to know that there is no where in this world where (self-identified) Blacks can go where African heritage is the predominant culture, if they so desired. But this now hijacks a hijack.

The greater point is that every group should have learned, is that you do need to be for yourself, that if you are not for yourself no one else is likely to be for there for you. That we must not be only for ourselves and that as a world we need to come to grips with the ugly reality that genocide is not an exceptional desire and that participation in it was not unique to Germans but is something we are all capable of. We need to define the ways to prevent it and not allow it just because it is in Rwanda and not Europe. We need to know when we should get involved as outsiders looking out for others who we may not like or have much in common with.

109

Maybe A.'s parents somehow passed through a portal from an alternate universe where the Nazis won WWII?

110

I must say, I have rarely encountered anyone who argued that the opinions of Orthodox Jews and bigoted skinheads about what it means to be Jewish are “logically” “equally abhorrent”.

Very interesting. :dubious:

111

Neither are concerned with the properties of the person as an individual, but as a member of an arbitrary group. Now, treating a person a certain way because of their genetics or their religion or their culture at least bases the treatment on the person… but none of those things make a person Jewish.

Being Jewish is, traditionally, determined by lineage. Not genetics, lineage. It follows that Orthodox Jews base a significant part of their reactions to certain people on a wholly arbitrary concept – just as skinheads would.

If you’d like to suggest a line of reasoning that indicates that the Orthodox aren’t being just as irrational and discriminatory as the Neo-Nazis, please share it.

112

In your opinion, are other racial, cultural, religious and ethnic groupings and identities “rational” and “non-discriminatory”, and Judaism the only one which is “irrational” and “discriminatory”?

If so, very curious indeed. :dubious:

If not, I would like to hear some other examples of racial, cultural, religious and ethnic groupings which are “irrational” and “discriminatory”.

As for Orthodox Jews being as irrational and discriminatory as Nazis … well, for one, as far as I know, they don’t in general seem to advocate killing people they dislike. Seems a bit of a major difference to me.

The main problem with Nazis is not that they do not conform to some notion of “logic”, but that they tend to want to hurt people. I don’t find any religion, and damn few political movements, to be particularly “logical”, but it does not therefore follow that they are all equally reprehensible, or, in your words, “equally abhorrent”.

Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, tend to mind their own business and harm nobody. Why anyone would consider them “equally abhorrent” to Nazis is utterly beyond me, and, to be frank, your explaination doesn’t make much in the way of sense. Who cares how they self-identify?

A fist in the face from some Nazi skinhead is a lot more objectionable, methinks.

113

I dislike most of them, but there are few which concern themselves with an identification concept based on such an arbitrary criterion. (The exception is the concept of “a child conceived out out wedlock”, which I find positively distasteful.)

I don’t much care if you hate someone for ludicrous reasons, love them for ludicrous reasons, or insist upon saddling them with a supposedly binding divine contract for ludicrous reasons. Hate in itself isn’t wrong – it’s the method used to determine who should be hated that can be right or wrong.

In brief: skinheads aren’t wrong for wanting to kill people, but for wanting to kill people for stupid and arbitrary reasons. Orthodox Jews aren’t right for not wanting to kill people, but for classifying people in stupid and arbitrary ways that bear a striking resemblance to the ways skinheads classify people.

114

This is one of the oddest things I have read on this board.

Has it never occured to you that all ethnic, religious and cultural self-identification is illogical and arbitrary?

Seems very bizzare to single out Orthodox Jews. It seems even more bizzare to repeatedly assert that they are somehow as reprehensible as Nazis, because they are both “illogical”.

I vehemently disagree that “loving someone for ludicrous reasons” is the moral equal of “hating someone for ludicrous reasons”. By that criterion, every lover on the planet is really as bad as a Nazi.

Your “logic” seems to amount to this:

“Loving the colour blue more than red is illogical. Nazis are illogical. Therefore, loving the colour blue is as bad as being a Nazi.”

Missing is any concept of exactly why Nazis are bad. Well, they are bad because they hurt people without any concern for morality, not because they are illogical!

It is the same as saying “vegitarians are as bad as Hitler, because Hitler was a vegitarian”. It simply does not follow.

Right now, your position seems to be, basically, that you “dislike” Orthodox Jews because you find them illogical. Well, there are lots and lots of people for you to “dislike” out there, if that is your criterion. Christians, Muslims, Jews, lovers … the list is long.

Of course, if the whole point of your comments is to find some “logical” reason to “dislike” Orthodox Jews specifically, then there is really not much more to be said.

115

TVAA, can’t you start a new thread about the Holocaust being solely about the Jews or whatever?

116

Let’s examine how illogical the Orthodox Jewish rule is.
Let’s say it it is necessary to identify those who are Jewish, and it is actually necessary, by ritual, to do so before the person in question can make an informed choice. I’m fairly glad that I didn’t have to have my bris at 13, thank you. (Let’s take the god belief as a given, shall we. We’re only interested in the distinction between Jew and non-Jew here.)

Who is Jewish? We can have some authority figure make people Jewish, the way Kings would convert their entire kingdoms. But that pretty much trivializes what was seen as something important. You can use paternity, but that is hard to prove without waiting a bunch of centuries for DNA testing. Or you can use maternal descent.

My great grandparents came from Russia/Poland. I rather suspect I have some cossack in my blood. Maternal descent means that children who could have been a result of rape are not excluded from the community, but were accepted into the community as full members. Was that irrational? I just heard a story on NPR on the children of white fur trappers and native American women, who have been second class citizens, excluded from both groups, for two centuries. Is that really more rational?

BTW, TVAA, please give a cite as to how Israel is practicing segregation from non-Jews. Preferences are not segregation, by the way.

117

Good God, I’d like to run into a Holocaust Denier. I really would. I read the book about David Irving’s trial----Lying About Hitler and it was extraordinarily enraging. My Dad was part Roma. When some of my cousins went back to Germany, they tracked down their old town, and found people who actually remembered those relatives. It’s utterly infuriating to me that people can deny a historical event that *living people * experienced.

118

Couldn’t have said it better myself. This idea that parents get to pick and choose parts of the curriculum for their child is laughable.

“My kid doesn’t have to learn multiplication. So you have to excuse him from class on those days, test him differently, and still pass him even though he hasn’t met the same performance level as the rest of the class.”

“My five year old doesn’t have to learn English, since I think reading causes brain warts. You are now obligated to pass her through high school level english and award her a PhD in Liberal Arts, magna cum laude, from a state school.”

Horsepuckey. If your kid is in public school, he or she gets to learn the curriculum. Then he or she gets to be tested on it, the same as every other kid. Then he or she has to meet the same standards of performance as everyone else. Period. Your alternatives are private school, home school, lobbying to get the curriculum changed through democratic means, or failing out. No child is entitled to a diploma, just to equal opportunity to earn one.

Schools started catering to the anti-evolution nutbars, and now it’s just flowing on along its merry way. No kid should pass a class if said kid has not met the educational standards required by that class.

119

I think we should deny the existence of holocaust denial. If the holocaust denier mentions books, etc., arguing their case, say they don’t exist, that they are all a rumor. If they give you a book, tell them it was forged. Keep saying THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HOLOCAUST DENIAL. IT IS ALL A HOAX.

120

Can they come to Baltimore and see the Holocaust Memorial? (scroll down about halfway, click one link for a large photo of the whole area, another for the text)
It’s pretty impressive.

Another link:
http://www.josephsheppard.com/holocaust/AboutMemorial.htm