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How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank
(JTA) — You’d think that in a country so closely identified with Anne Frank — perhaps the Holocaust’s best-known victim — cultivating memory of the genocide wouldn’t be a steep challenge.
That’s why a recent survey, suggesting what the authors called a “disturbing” lack of knowledge in the Netherlands about the Holocaust, set off alarm bells. “Survey shows lack of Holocaust awareness in the Netherlands,” wrote the Associated Press. “In the Netherlands, a majority do not know the Holocaust affected their country,” was the JTA headline. “The Holocaust is a myth, a quarter of Dutch younger generation agree,” per the Jerusalem Post.
“Survey after survey, we continue to witness a decline in Holocaust knowledge and awareness. Equally disturbing is the trend towards Holocaust denial and distortion,” Gideon Taylor, the president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which conducted the study, said in a statement.
Like other recent studies by Claims Conference, the latest survey has been challenged by some scholars, who say the sample size is small, or the survey is too blunt a tool for examining what a country’s residents do or don’t know about their history. Even one of the experts who conducted the survey chose to focus on the positive findings: “I am encouraged by the number of respondents to this survey that believe Holocaust education is important,” Emile Schrijver, the general director of Amsterdam’s Jewish Cultural Quarter, told JTA.
One of the scholars who says the survey doesn’t capture the subtleties of Holocaust education and commemoration in the Netherlands is Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College in Maryland. Contreras studies the historical memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in Holland. In a Twitter thread earlier this week, she agreed with those who say that “the headline that’s being plastered everywhere exaggerates the idea that young people in NL know nothing about the Holocaust.”
At the same time, she notes that while the Netherlands takes Holocaust education and commemoration seriously, it has a long way to go in reckoning with a past that includes collaboration with the Nazis, postwar antisemitism, a small but vocal far right and a sense of national victimhood that often downplays the experience of Jews during the Shoah.
“It’s such a complex issue,” Contreras told me. “There’s no one answer to how the Holocaust is remembered in the Netherlands.”
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I took the opportunity to speak with Contreras not only about Dutch memory, but how the Netherlands may serve as an example of how countries deal with Holocaust memory and the national stories they tell.
Our interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Tell me a little bit about when you saw the survey, and perhaps how it didn’t mesh with what you know about the Netherlands?
Jazmine Contreras: My major problem is that every single outlet is picking up this story and running a headline like, “Youth in the Netherlands don’t even know the Holocaust happened there. They cannot tell you how many people were killed, how many were deported.” And I think that’s really problematic because it paints a really simplistic picture of Holocaust memory and Holocaust education in that country.
There are multiple programs, in Amsterdam, in other cities, in Westerbork, the former transit camp. They have an ongoing program that brings survivors and the second generation to colleges, to middle schools and primary schools all across the country. And they also have in Amsterdam a program called Oorlog in Mijn Buurt, “War in My Neighborhood,” and basically young people become the “memory bearers” — that’s the kind of language they use — and interview people who grew up and experience the war in their neighborhood, and then speak as if they were the person who experienced it, in the first person.
You also have events around the May 4 commemoration remembering the Dutch who died in war and in peacekeeping operations, and a program called Open Jewish Houses [when owners of formerly Jewish property open their homes to strangers to talk about the Jews who used to live there]. It’s really amazing: I’ve actually been able to visit these formerly Jewish homes and hear the stories. And, of course, the Anne Frank House has its own slew of programming, and teachers talk a lot about the Holocaust and take students to synagogues in places like Groningen, where they have a brand new exhibit at the synagogue. They are taking thousands at this point. The new National Holocaust Names Memorial is in the center of Amsterdam.
I think, again, this idea that children are growing up without having exposure to Holocaust memory, or knowledge of what happened in the Netherlands, is a bit skewed. I think we get into a dangerous area if we’re painting the country with a broad brush and saying nobody knows anything about the Holocaust.
Have you anecdotal evidence or seen studies of Dutch kids about whether they’re getting the education they need?
Anecdotally, yes. I was invited to attend a children’s commemoration that they do at the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater in Amsterdam, which is the former Dutch theater that was used as a major deportation site. And it’s children who put on a commemoration themselves. Again, not every child is participating in this, but if they’re not participating in the children’s commemoration, then they’re doing the “War in My Neighborhood” program, or they’re doing Open Jewish Houses, or they’re taking field trips. That’s pretty impressive to me, and it’s pretty meaningful. They want to help participate in it in the future. They want to come back because it leaves a lasting impression for them.
Let’s back up a bit. Anne Frank dominates everyone’s thinking about Holland and the Holocaust. And I guess the story that’s told is that she was protected by her neighbors until, of course, the Nazis proved too powerful, found her and sent her away. What’s right and what’s wrong about that narrative?
Don’t forget that Anne Frank was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands. And I think that part of the story is also really interesting and left out. She’s this Dutch icon, but she was a German Jewish refugee who came to the Netherlands, and the Dutch Jewish community was single-handedly responsible for funding, at Westerbork, what was first a refugee center. I think that’s really complicated because now we also have a discourse about present-day refugees and the Holocaust.
Jazmine Contreras, an assistant professor of history at Goucher College, specializes in Dutch Holocaust memory. (Courtesy)
I’ve also never quite understood the insistence on making her an icon when the end of the story is that she’s informed on and dies in a concentration camp. The idea that the Franks were hidden here fits really well into this idea of Dutch resistance and tolerance, and her diary often gets misquoted to kind of represent her as someone who had hope despite the fact that she was being persecuted. In the 1950s, her narrative gets adopted into the U.S., and we treat it as this globalizing human rights discourse.
We don’t talk about the fact that she’s found because she’s informed upon, and we don’t talk about the fact that you had non-Jewish civilians who were informers for a multitude of reasons, including ideological collaboration and their own financial gain.
And when it was talked about most recently, it was about a discredited book that named her betrayer as a Jew.
That was a huge controversy.
I get the sense from your writing that the story the Dutch tell about World War II is very incomplete, and that they haven’t fully reckoned with their collaboration under Nazi occupation even as they emphasize their own victimhood.
On the national state level, they have officially acknowledged not only the extensive collaboration, but the failure of both the government and the Crown to speak out on behalf of Dutch Jews. [In 2020, Prime Minister Mark Rutte formally apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.] Now, the question is, what’s happening in broader Dutch society?
Unfortunately, there was an increase in voting for the Dutch far right, although they’ve never managed to get a majority or even come close to it.
Something else that’s happening is that many ask, “Why should Dutch Jews get separate consideration after the Second World War, a separate victimhood, when we were all victimized?” The Netherlands is unique because it’s occupied for the entirety of the Second World War — 1940 to 1945. There is the civil service collaborating, right, but there’s no occupation government. So it’s not like Belgium. It’s not like France, not like Denmark. And there was the Hunger Winter of 1944-45 when 20,000 civilians perished due to famine. You have real victimhood, so people ask, “Why are the Jews so special? We all suffered.”
And at the same time, scholarship keeps emerging about the particular ways non-Jewish Dutch companies and individuals cooperated with the Nazis.
The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, which has done so much of this research, found that Jews who were deported had to pay utility bills for when they weren’t living there. You have a huge controversy around the the Dutch railway [which said it would compensate hundreds of Holocaust victims for its role in shipping Jews to death camps]. The Dutch Red Cross apologized [in 2017 for failing to act to protect Jews during World War II], following the publication of a research paper on its inaction. A couple of decades ago, the government basically auctioned off paintings, jewelry and other Jewish possessions, and in 2020 they started the effort to give back pieces of art that were in Dutch museums. Dienke Hondius wrote a book on the cold reception given to survivors upon their return. Remco Ensel and Evelien Gans also wrote a book on postwar Jewish antisemitism.
So a lot has been happening, a lot of controversies, and, thanks to all of this research, a lot happening in order to rectify the situation.
It sounds like a mixed story, of resistance and collaboration, and of rewriting the past but also coming to terms with it.
There’s a really complex history here of both wanting to present it as “everybody’s a victim” and that the resistance was huge. In fact, the data shows 5% of the people were involved in resistance and 5% were collaborators. So it’s not like this wholesale collaboration or resistance was happening. It was only in 1943, when non-Jewish men were called up for labor service in Germany, that they got really good at hiding people and by then it was too late.
Right. My colleagues at JTA often note that the Nazis killed or deported more Dutch Jews per capita than anywhere in occupied Western Europe — of about 110,000 Jews deported, only a few thousand survived.
Yes, the highest percentage of deportation in Western Europe.
A room at the Anne Frank House museum where she and her family hid for two years during the Holocaust in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. (Photo Collection Anne Frank House)
Since this week is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let me ask what Holland gets right and wrong compared to maybe some other European countries with either similar experiences or comparable experiences.
The framing of that question is difficult because there’s so many unique points about the Holocaust and the occupation in the Netherlands. Again, it was occupied for the entirety of 1940-45. You have a civil service that was willing to sign Aryan declarations. The queen, as head of a government in exile in London, is basically saying, “Do what you need to just to survive.”
One of the big problems is there are people like Geert Wilders [a contemporary right-wing Dutch lawmaker] who practice this kind of philo-Semitism and support of Israel, but it’s really about blaming the Muslim population for antisemitism and saying none of it is homegrown. They don’t have to talk about the fact that there was widespread antisemitism in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands they’re not instituting laws around what you can and can’t say about the Holocaust like in Poland [where criticizing Polish collaboration has been criminalized]. There are so many amazing educational initiatives and nonprofit organizations that are doing the work. And even these public controversies ended up being outlets for the production of Holocaust memory when survivors, but mostly now the second and third generations, use that space to talk about their own family Holocaust history.
Tell me about your personal stake in this: How did the Holocaust become a subject of study for you?
I specialize in Dutch Holocaust memory. I’m not Jewish, but my grandparents on my mother’s side are Dutch. For my first project I looked at relationships between German soldiers and Dutch women during the war during the occupation, and I eventually kind of made my way into the post war, when these children of former collaborators were still very marginalized in Dutch society. It ties into this. I do interviews with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and children of collaborators and how these memory politics play out.
What is the utility of events like International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the major Holocaust memorials in educating the public about the Holocaust and World War II?
International Holocaust Remembrance Day and May 4 result in the production of new memories about the Holocaust and the Second World War. I was at the 2020 International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration when the prime minister formally apologized. It was a really big moment, and it allowed the Jewish community, and the Roma and Sinti community, a space to remember and to share in that and to speak to it as survivors and the second and third generation.
Unlike the United States, the Netherlands is a small, insular country, so the relationship between the public and the media and academics is so close. So in the weeks before and the weeks after these memorials, academics, politicians and experts are publishing pieces about memory. That’s useful to the production of new memories and information about the Holocaust.
But what about the other days of the year? Will putting a monument in the center of Amsterdam actually change how people understand the Holocaust? That is a question that I think is harder to answer. The new monument features individual names of 102,000 Jews and Roma and Sinti and visually gives you the scope of what the Holocaust looked like in the Netherlands. But does that matter if somebody lives outside of Amsterdam and they’re never going to see this monument?
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The post How the Holocaust is remembered in the land of Anne Frank appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Democratic leader says GOP-led Congress boosted ICE funding while Jewish security is underfunded
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries used a Jewish gathering in New York on Sunday to spotlight what he described as an imbalance in federal priorities, building on outrage over the Trump administration’s violent crackdown in Minneapolis that resulted in two fatal shootings.
Jeffries criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for boosting immigration enforcement funding by billions while, he said, security funding for Jewish institutions continues to lag amid rising antisemitic threats. He said that in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed last July and included cuts to Medicaid, the Department of Homeland Security received an additional $191 billion, including $75 billion for ICE.
“If that can happen, then the least that we can do is ensure that this vital security grant program is funded by hundreds of millions of dollars more to keep the Jewish community and every other community safe,” Jeffries said.
The Nonprofit Security Grant Program, established by Congress in 2005 and administered by FEMA under the Department of Homeland Security, provides funding to nonprofits, including houses of worship, to strengthen security against potential attacks. Congress began significantly increasing funding in 2018 after a wave of synagogue attacks nationwide, bringing the program to $270 million today.
Major Jewish organizations are pushing to raise funding to $500 million amid rising antisemitic threats. Last year, the Trump administration briefly froze the program as part of broader agency cuts, and some groups have been reluctant to apply because applicants must affirm cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Jeffries said House Democrats strongly support an increase to $500 million annually to meet escalating security needs. “It’s got to be an American issue, because that is what combating antisemitism should be all about,” he said.
The breakfast, previously held at the offices of the UJA-Federation of New York, was held this year for the first time in the events hall at Park East Synagogue, which was the site of a pro-Palestinian protest last year that featured antisemitic slogans and posters.
Sunday’s program also included remarks from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who told the audience that his support for Jewish security funding will only continue growing under his leadership, calling it his “baby.”
“As long as I’m in the Senate, this program will continue to grow from strength to strength, and we won’t let anyone attack it or undo it,” Schumer said.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, the co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus who is retiring at the end of the year after 36 years in the House, also spoke at the event. Nadler, like several other Democrats in recent months, compared the actions of ICE agents to the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police. The comparison has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, Republicans and Jewish leaders.
Support for Israel aid
Both Schumer and Jeffries vowed in their remarks to continue supporting U.S. military assistance to Israel, amid increasing calls within the party for sharper opposition to Israel. Polls show that Democratic voters are increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians. In July, a record 27 Senate Democrats, a majority of the caucus, supported a pair of resolutions calling for the blocking of weapons transfers to Israel.
“I think it’s the humane thing to do to ensure that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and eternal homeland for the Jewish people,” Jeffries said. The House Minority Leader, who has cultivated close ties with Jewish leaders since his election in 2012, noted that he has visited Israel nine times. He recalled that on his recent trip, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Yechiel Leiter, joked that it might be time for Democrats to buy property in Jerusalem.
Schumer, the nation’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, has seen his popularity decline and has faced calls to step down from his role as leader. On Sunday, he pledged that he “will always fight to give Israel what it needs to protect itself from the many who want to wipe Israel off the face of the map.”
The post Democratic leader says GOP-led Congress boosted ICE funding while Jewish security is underfunded appeared first on The Forward.
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Antisemitism speech sparks pushback from Jewish conservatives
(JTA) — When Orit Arfa read political theorist Yoram Hazony’s recent comments on antisemitism on the American right, she decided that her past admiration for him no longer justified staying silent about what she sees as a moral failure.
Arfa, who served until last month as a spokesperson for Hazony, responded Thursday with a deeply personal essay in Tablet magazine titled “Yoram Hazony’s 15 Minutes.” She wrote about her departure after four years from the Edmund Burke Foundation, the organization Hazony founded that is an institutional hub of the national conservatism movement. In her essay, she accused Hazony of erasing work she and others did under his leadership and of publicly faulting Jewish institutions for failures she says he knowingly helped create.
“I have known and admired Yoram for many years,” Arfa wrote, praising his scholarship and describing his 2015 book on the Book of Esther as one of the most influential works in her intellectual life. “It’s with a heavy heart, then, that I feel compelled to set the record straight.”
An Israeli conservative intellectual, Hazony is one of the architects of national conservatism, arguing for a politics grounded in nationalism, religion and tradition. His ideas have gained influence among Republican politicians, donors and movement strategists, particularly within the wing of the party associated with figures like Vice President JD Vance.
Hazony’s influence has placed him at the center of a growing dispute on the Jewish right, as the movement he helped shape confronts allegations of antisemitism in its orbit. Hazony has declined requests for an interview from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in recent months.
Because of Hazony’s prominence, Arfa’s break with him has resonated well beyond their personal history, highlighting a broader debate among Jewish conservatives over how to confront antisemitism when it comes not from political opponents, but from figures embedded in the American right.
That debate was thrust into the open after Hazony’s keynote speech earlier this week at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, where he forcefully condemned antisemitic rhetoric aired on the program of conservative media figure Tucker Carlson. Hazony described Carlson’s show as a “circus of aggressive anti-Jewish propaganda,” listing familiar antisemitic tropes aired by guests.
“These aren’t normal political messages, disagreeing with other members of the Trump coalition on legitimate policy issues,” Hazony said. “They’re abusive, wild slanders, and their repeated appearance on Tucker’s show has persuaded almost every Jew I know that the program’s purpose is to drive Jews—along with tens of millions of Zionist Christians—out of the Trump coalition and out of the Republican party.”
At the same time, Hazony argued that Jewish and Christian Zionist activists had failed to persuade Republican leaders to distance themselves from Carlson — not because Carlson was too powerful, but because critics had not presented their case professionally. He mocked the absence of a concise, evidence-based “15-minute explainer video” that could persuade conservatives unfamiliar with Carlson’s program, calling this a sign of “extreme incompetence” by what he labeled the “antisemitism-industrial complex.”
That claim became the focal point of Arfa’s response.
“The truth, as Yoram well knows, is that there is such a video,” she wrote. According to Arfa, she and other Edmund Burke Foundation staff members worked with Hazony to produce exactly such an explainer — a 14-minute, 57-second compilation of examples of antisemitic rhetoric aired on Carlson’s program.
Hazony, she said, chose not to make it public.
“He kept it unlisted in an obscure account,” Arfa wrote, adding that she was “flabbergasted” to hear Hazony publicly insist no such work existed. “It saddens me that he would diminish the work of his dedicated employees by erasing our efforts.”
A spokesperson for Hazony did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dispute over Hazony’s speech has become a proxy for a larger argument about responsibility and strategy. Hazony is urging Jews to focus on building alliances with what he describes as the dominant nationalist wing of the Republican Party, arguing that moralistic confrontations risk alienating potential allies and entrenching antisemitism.
“What would you find if you actually invested the time and effort, and opened those doors?” Hazony said in his speech. “Mostly, you’d discover that nationalist Republicans are not anti-Semites. That they are strongly committed to having Jews in their coalition. That they would like to have closer relations with the Jewish community. That many of them see Israel as an inspiration and wish America were more like Israel. In short, you’d discover that most of them are potential friends and allies.”
Critics counter that this approach shifts responsibility away from political leaders who tolerate antisemitism. Several commentators on the right have argued that treating antisemitism as a communications problem, rather than a moral red line, risks normalizing it.
Tablet, where Arfa’s essay was published, issued an unusually scathing response on social media, accusing Hazony of effectively blaming Jews for their own marginalization.
In a post on X directly responding to a Hazony, Tablet wrote, “Tucker Carlson could goose-step down Pennsylvania Avenue butt-naked with a swastika carved into his forehead and it would be the fault of ‘the anti-semitism industrial complex’ for not making the case ‘clear enough’ to ‘Republican nationalists.’”
Tablet’s post added, “The fault doesn’t lie with the Jews for being targeted by political arsonists. It lies with those people themselves, and with those who have given them political and intellectual cover, yourself included.”
The post went on to accuse Hazony of importing European-style ethnonationalist ideas into an American context defined by constitutional liberalism and religious pluralism, warning that such thinking risked alienating both Jews and the broader electorate.
Others focused less on ideology than on political accountability. Max Abrahms, a political scientist who studies extremism and political violence, argued that Hazony’s framing functioned as a defense of powerful allies who have declined to distance themselves from Carlson.“I interpret this as a defense for your political allies, especially J.D. Vance and Kevin Roberts who won’t ditch Tucker,” Abrahms wrote.
A broader critique came from Saul Sadka, a conservative writer and analyst, who accused Hazony of minimizing antisemitism in service of what he considered a marginal political project. Writing on X, Sadka argued that Hazony mischaracterized the Republican Party, overstated the influence of nationalist conservatives, and pressured Jews to align themselves with forces that, he said, are both electorally weak and tolerant of antisemitic rhetoric.
For her part, Arfa,wrote in Tablet that she’d prefer to stay out of the conversation now that’s stopped working for Hazony. Her focus is on studying to become a rabbi at the Abraham Geiger College in Potsdam, Germany, a seminary affiliated with Reform and liberal Judaism.
The post Antisemitism speech sparks pushback from Jewish conservatives appeared first on The Forward.
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What’s missing in our Jewish high schools
ווען איך בין געווען אַ קינד אין די 1960ער און 70ער יאָרן זענען געווען גאָר ווייניק טאָגשולן פֿאַר ייִדישע קינדער. האָבן ס׳רובֿ משפּחות געשיקט די קינדער אין די עפֿנטלעכע שולן, און ווי אַ צוגאָב — אין אַ תּלמוד־תּורה אָדער ייִדישער נאָכמיטאָג־שול צו קריגן אַ ביסל ייִדישע בילדונג.
הײַנט זענען אָבער דאָ אַ סך ייִדישע טאָגשולן, פֿון פּראָגרעסיווע ביז חרדישע. אין דעם אַרטיקל וועל איך זיך קאָנצעטרירן אויף די מאָדערן־אָרטאָדאָקסישע מיטלשולן, כאָטש מע וואָלט עס געקענט אויך ווענדן אויף אַלע שולן וואָס שטרעבן אײַנצופֿלאַנצן אין די תּלמידים אַ טיפֿע פֿאַרבינדונג מיט זייערע ייִדישע וואָרצלען.
אין 2013 האָט דער „פּיו‟־פֿאָרום פּובליקירט די רעזולטאַטן פֿון אַן אַרומנעמיקער שטודיע וועגן די אַמעריקאַנער ייִדן, וואָס האָט באַוויזן, שוואַרץ אויף ווײַס, עטלעכע בפֿירושע טענדענצן אין דער אַמעריקאַנער ייִדישער קהילה. איינס פֿון די געפֿינסן איז געווען דער ממשותדיקער וווּקס פֿון דער אָרטאָדאָקסישער באַפֿעלקערונג, בפֿרט אין ניו־יאָרק און ניו־דזשערזי.
איין סיבה פֿאַרן וווּקס, האָבן די פֿאָרשער משער געווען, איז ווײַל 48% אָרטאָדאָקסישע ייִדן האָבן פֿיר אָדער מער קינדער, בעת בלויז 9% אַנדערע ייִדישע עלטערן האָבן גרויסע משפּחות. אַ צווייטע סיבה: 98% אָרטאָדאָקסישע ייִדן האָבן אַ ייִדישן מאַן אָדער פֿרוי, בעת בײַ די קאָנסערוואַטיווע ייִדן האָבן 73% אַ ייִדישן זיווג, און בײַ רעפֿאָרם־ייִדן — 50%. אַ קינד וואָס ווערט דערצויגן בײַ צוויי ייִדישע עלטערן וועט געוויינטלעך זיך גיכער אידענטפֿיצירן ווי אַ ייִד איידער איינס בײַ וועמען איינער פֿון די עלטערן איז נישט קיין ייִד.
דער פּועל־יוצא פֿון דעם אַלץ איז אַז די ייִדישע טאָגשולן און מיטלשולן, בפֿרט די אָרטאָדאָקסישע, האָבן הײַנט מער תּלמידים ווי זיי האָבן ווען אַ מאָל געהאַט. עלטערן פֿון די פֿרומע שולן האָפֿן אַז דורכן שיקן די קינדער אַהין וועלן זייערע קינדער קריגן אַ געראָטענע ייִדישע בילדונג און במילא פֿאַרבלײַבן פֿרומע ייִדישע קינדער.
נישט תּמיד אַרבעט זיך עס אָבער אויס אַזוי. הינטער די קוליסן שושקען זיך די עלטערן, לערער און שול־דירעקטאָרן — גיכער בײַ די מאָדערן־אָרטאָדאָקסישע מיטלשולן איידער בײַ די חרדישע — וועגן אַן אָנגעווייטיקטן ענין: נישט געקוקט אויף זייערע גרעסטע באַמיִונגען, גייען געוויסע גראַדואַנטן פֿון די מיטלשולן „אַראָפּ פֿון דרך‟; דאָס הייסט — זיי היטן מער נישט קיין פֿרום לעבן.
ווען איך רעד וועגן דעם ענין מיט נישט־רעליגיעזע מענטשן, סײַ ייִדן סײַ נישט־ייִדן, וועלן זיי אָפֿט קוועטשן מיט די אַקסלען און זאָגן: „וואָס איז דאָ דער חידוש? מיר וווינען אין אַ פֿרײַער געזעלשאַפֿט, וווּ קינדער קענען אויסקלײַבן זייער אייגענעם לעבן־שטייגער. אויב דאָס קינד איז צופֿרידן מיטן לעבן וואָס ער האָט פֿאַר זיך אויסגעקליבן, דאַרפֿן די עלטערן אויך זײַן צופֿרידן.‟
ענטפֿער איך זיי, אַז ווען עלטערן גלייבן שטאַרק אין אַ געוויסער אידעאָלאָגיע, איז נאַטירלעך אַז זיי וועלן אַנטוישט ווערן אויב זייער קינד וואַרפֿן עס אָפּ. אַ מאַמע וואָס איז, למשל, זייער איבערגעגעבן צו געוויסע פּראָגרעסיווע אידעאַלן, וואָס מאַרשירט מיט אירע פֿרײַנד אויף פּאָליטישע דעמאָנסטראַציעס און ברענגט אַפֿילו מיט איר קינד — וועט זיכער אַנטוישט ווערן אויב דאָס קינד שליסט זיך שפּעטער אָן אין דער רעפּובליקאַנער פּאַרטיי. בײַ איר וואָלט דאָס אויך געהייסן אַז ער איז „אַראָפּ פֿון דרך‟.
די סיבות פֿאַר וואָס אַ קינד פֿון אַ פֿרומער היים וואָלט פֿאַרלאָזט אַזאַ לעבן־שטייגער זענען אָפֿט זייער קאָמפּליצירטע און אַ רעזולטאַט פֿון עטלעכע פֿאַקטאָרן. דורך מײַנע אייגענע שמועסן מיט מיטלשול־גראַדואַנטן האָב איך אַנטדעקט פֿיר מעגלעכע סיבות דערפֿאַר:
- נאָכן גראַדויִרן, פֿאָרט דער סטודענט אַוועק שטודירן אין אַ סעקולערן קאָלעדזש און דאָרט דערפֿילט ער אַז דאָס רעליגיעזע לעבן האַלט אים אָפּ פֿון זיך אויסלעבן ווי אַ פֿרײַער פֿויגל (ענלעך צום ייִנגל וואָס באַשרײַבט די דערשטיקנדיקע ליבשאַפֿט פֿון דער מאַמען אין איציק מאַנגערס ליד, „אויפֿן וועג שטייט אַ בוים‟).
- ער אָדער זי גלייבט נישט אין גאָט און זעט דערפֿאַר נישט קיין זינען אין היטן די מיצוות.
- ער אָדער זי האָט געליטן פֿון אַן אומגליקלעך משפּחה־לעבן און האָט דערפֿאַר נעגאַטיווע אַסאָציאַציעס מיט דער משפּחה, אַרײַנגערעכנט איר פֿרומקייט,
- ער אָדער זי איז „גיי‟ (האָט ליב דעם זעלבן מין) און פֿילט זיך אַרויסגעשלאָסן פֿונעם פֿרומען ציבור צוליב דער תּורהס פֿאַרווערן אַזוינע באַציִונגען.
שטעלט זיך די פֿראַגע: איז דאָ עפּעס וואָס די מיטלשולן וואָלטן געקענט טאָן פֿאַר יענע תּלמידים איידער זיי פֿאַרלאָזן דאָס רעליגיעזע לעבן? אויב מע האָט שוין אויסגעפּרוּווט אַלע קירובֿ־מיטלען און עס העלפֿט ווײַטער נישט, זאָל מען זיך פּשוט אונטערגעבן? איך האַלט אַז ניין. יעדעס קינד וואָס גראַדויִרט פֿון אַ ייִדישער מיטלשול, וואָלט געדאַרפֿט אַרויסקומען ווי אַ שטאָלצער ייִד, אַפֿילו אויב ער דריקט עס אויס אויף אַ נישט־רעליגיעזן אופֿן. און טאַקע דערפֿאַר דאַרפֿן די שולן אַנטוויקלען די ייִדישע אידענטיטעט פֿון די תּלמידים נישט בלויז אינעם רעליגיעזן זינען אָבער אויך אינעם נאַציאָנאַל־קולטורעלן.
איין אופֿן, וואָס ס׳רובֿ טאָגשולן טוען שוין, איז דורכן פֿאַרשטאַרקן די קינדערס אידענטיפֿיקאַציע מיט מדינת־ישׂראל. דאָס העלפֿט אויב דער בחור אָדער מיידל וועט שפּעטער טאַקע עולה זײַן. אין דער אמתן אָבער וועלן ס׳רובֿ תּלמידים זיך נישט באַזעצן אין ישׂראל, אַזוי אַז דאָס אַליין איז נישט קיין לייזונג.
וואָס מע דאַרף יאָ טאָן איז לערנען דעם תּלמיד די פֿילפֿאַרביקייט פֿון זײַן ייִדישן אָפּשטאַם, וואָס בײַ ס׳רובֿ ייִדן אין אַמעריקע איז דאָס אַ מזרח־אייראָפּעיִשער. אַחוץ די געוויינטלעכע ייִדישע לימודים ווי חומש, נבֿיאים און גמרא, דאַרף מען אויך אײַנפֿירן קורסן וואָס באַקענען די קינדער מיט דער רײַכקייט פֿון דער ייִדישער קולטור. ווען דער תּלמיד וועט זיך דערוויסן אַז ייִדישקייט נעמט אַרײַן נישט בלויז רעליגיע אָבער אויך די ייִדישע שפּראַך (ווײַל העברעיִש וועלן זיי זיך שוין במילא אויסלערנען), די געשיכטע, מאכלים און מוזיק פֿון אַמאָליקן ייִדישלאַנד, גיט עס אים אַ בעסערן פֿאַרשטאַנד פֿון וואָס עס הייסט צו זײַן אַ ייִד.
אַ צאָל מיטלשולן טוען דאָס שוין, אָבער בלויז אויפֿן שפּיץ מעסער. אינעם ענגליש־קלאַס, למשל, וועט דער לערער הייסן די תּלמידים לייענען אַן איבערזעצונג פֿון אַ באַשעוויס־דערציילונג. ליטעראַטור איז אָבער בלויז איין אַספּעקט פֿון קולטור. כּדי באמת אײַנצופֿלאַנצן אַן אינטערעס און ליבשאַפֿט צום עטניש־קולטורעלן אַספּעקט פֿון ייִדישקייט דאַרף מען אײַנפֿירן קורסן פֿון פֿאַרשיידענע מינים. למשל:
- אַ קלאַס וועגן דער געשיכטע פֿון די ייִדן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע — און נישט בלויז וועגן דער ציוניסטישער באַוועגונג און דעם חורבן (דאָס לערנט מען שוין), נאָר וועגן די גרויסע אויפֿטוען במשך פֿון דער טויזנט־יאָריקער געשיכטע פֿון די ייִדן אין מיזרח־אייראָפּע: דער געבורט פֿון דער חסידישער באַוועגונג, די צעבליִונג פֿון דער ייִדישער און העברעיִשער ליטעראַטור, דער פּאָליטישער אַקטיוויזם פֿון די מזרח־אייראָפּעיִשע בונדיסטן, ציוניסטן און ייִדישיסטן, און ווי די ייִדן האָבן מיטגעבראַכט אָט די קולטור־ירושה קיין אַמעריקע.
- אַ קורס וועגן ייִדישן קינאָ, וווּ די קינדער קוקן אויף קלאַסישע ייִדישע פֿילמען ווי „דער דיבוק‟, „טבֿיה‟ און „ייִדל מיטן פֿידל‟ און דיסקוטירן סײַ דעם קולטור־היסטאָרישן קאָנטעקסט, סײַ די קונסט פֿונעם פֿילם.
- אַ קלאַס פֿון קלעזמער־מוזיק, און אַפֿילו אַ וואַרשטאַט וווּ די קינדער ברענגען זייערע אינסטרומענטן און לערנען זיך ווי אַליין צו שפּילן די אַלטע ייִדישע מעלאָדיעס (אָדער אַ קלאַס פֿון פֿאַרשידענע מינים ייִדישן פֿאָלקסמוזיק, אַרײַנגערעכנט די ספֿרדישע און תּימנער טראַדיציעס).
- אַ קאָכקלאַס וווּ די קינדער לערנען זיך אויס ווי צוצוגרייטן היימישע מזרח־אייראָפּעיִשע מאכלים ווי בלינצעס, קניידלעך און ראָגעלעך.
- ייִדיש־לעקציעס, ניצנדיק דעם אויסערגעוויינטלעכן קאָמפּיוטער־קורס, „ייִדיש פּאַפּ‟ וווּ קינדער לערנען זיך די שפּראַך דורך קוקן אויף די חנעוודיקע ייִדישע קאַרטונס פֿון נאָמי מיט איר ראָבאָט מאָבי— און וואָס איז, אַגבֿ, פֿרײַ פֿון אָפּצאָל.
געוויסע לערער און פּרינציפּאַלן וועלן טענהן, אַז צוליב דעם שוין געפּאַקטן לערנטאָג פֿון אַ ייִדישער מיטלשול (בפֿרט צוליב די אַוואַנסירטע סעקולערע לימודים וואָס די עלטערן פֿאָדערן כּדי זייערע קינדער זאָלן קענען אַרײַן אין די בעסטע אוניווערסיטעטן), איז פּשוט נישטאָ קיין צײַט צוצוגעבן אַזוינע קורסן. דאָס איז אָבער אַ תּירוץ פֿאַר די בענטשליכט. יעדער ווייסט אַז דאָס לערנען אַוואַנסירטע גמרא, למשל, איז נישט פֿאַר אַלעמען. אין דער זעלבער צײַט פֿונעם גמרא־קלאַס קען מען גיבן איינעם אָדער מער פֿון די קולטורקלאַסן ווי אַ ברירה.
דערצו קען מען אָפּהאַלטן די קלאַסן נאָך די געוויינטלעכע שול־שעהען. פּונקט ווי די מער אַטלעטישע תּלמידים גייען טרענירן אויף ספּאָרטמאַטשן, זאָלן תּלמידים מיט אַן אינטערעס צו קולטור זיך דערוויסן וועגן דער פֿילפֿאַרביקער קולטור־ירושה פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָלק און אַפֿילו גיין אויף שײַכותדיקע עקסקורסיעס צוזאַמען. די סטודענטן וואָס וווינען אין דער ניו־יאָרקער געגנט קענען, למשל, פֿאָרן צוזאַמען אין ייִדישן טעאַטער.
בקיצור, ווען מע פֿלאַנצט אײַן בײַ קינדער אַ ליבשאַפֿט צו זייער עטניש־קולטורעלן אָפּשטאַם, גיט עס זיי אַ געלעגנהייט צו בלײַבן שטאָלצע, גוט־אינפֿאָרמירטע ייִדן. נאָכן גראַדויִרן וועלן זיי קענען אויסדריקן זייער ייִדישע אידענטיטעט נישט בלויז דורך גיין אין שיל שבת און יום־טובֿ, נאָר דורכן ווײַטער זיך לערנען ייִדיש, זיך פֿאַרנעמען מיט אַקאַדעמישע פֿאָרשונגען פֿאַרבונדן מיט דער ייִדישער געשיכטע אָדער ליטעראַטור און גיין אויף ייִדישע קאָנצערטן, פֿעסטיוואַלן און קאָנפֿערענצן. דערבײַ וועלן אויך יענע קינדער, וואָס פֿאַרלאָזן דאָס רעליגיעזע לעבן, ווײַטער אָנהאַלטן אַ שטאַרקע פֿאַרבינדונג מיט ייִדן און ייִדישקייט און במילא וועלן זיי, כאָטש אינעם קולטורעלן זינען, קיין מאָל נישט אַראָפּ פֿון דרך.
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