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‘Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango’: A new Canadian music project gets Holocaust stories heard around the world
The stories of women who survived the Holocaust are reaching new audiences through an award-winning Canadian recording of Yiddish music and live multimedia performance that’s become a global touring presentation.
Survivors’ stories form the basis for Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango, a recorded album of original compositions based on the writings of those who settled in Toronto. The collaboration among Jewish researchers, writers, and musicians has taken the Canadian production to Brazil, Argentina, Taiwan, Japan and Australia, along with shows last summer in Germany, Poland and Austria, all since the project’s first live performances two years ago in Ottawa and Toronto.
Both the album and the live presentation count on a Toronto-based Argentine Yiddish musical act, to anchor the music. Payadora Tango Ensemble worked on their parts separately over Zoom during the pandemic. One of their first in-person encounters was getting together to shoot videos for Silent Tears tracks in High Park.
The current live production includes narration by project producer Dan Rosenberg, accompanied by a variety of photos and multimedia projections.
Silent Tears’ accolades include Canadian Folk Music Awards for best producers (shared by Drew Jurecka, Payadora’s bandleader, who mixed the album, and Rosenberg); plus Recording of the Year at Folk Music Ontario, both in 2024, in addition to critical nods and “best of” list inclusions from radio music programmers at CBC, the BBC and NPR.
But winning a major German world music prize last year brought the show its most recent gig, a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Hosted by the German Embassy in Washington D.C. on Jan. 22, senior foreign officials and members of Congress were in attendance.
Andreas Michaelis, the German ambassador to the United States, introduced the concert in Washington.
“We Germans can’t and don’t want to wash off the memory of the Holocaust and that’s why it’s so important that we team up with those that help us to work on Holocaust remembrance,” the ambassador said at the concert.
“It is not always understood that for us Germans, the crime, the worst of crimes that has been committed in the German name and by Germans is something that also marks our identity… As the post-war democracy of Germany… our policies always have to be normative, they have to be moral, and they need to be anchored and that is because of this unique crime that is a part of our history.”
The ensemble performed at Germany’s Rudolstadt world music festival to receive the major award (called Weltmusikpreis) during a 2024 summer tour that included Poland and Austria. (The album reached number one on World Music Charts Europe—a first for a Yiddish album, according to Rosenberg.)
“It is kind of remarkable to get to be invited to some of these places,” said Rosenberg from Washington. “The German Embassy of all places… it shows how the world can change.
“If someone had told me back when I was a kid growing up in Pittsburgh in the ‘70s that in 2025, this would happen, that the Germans would be inviting us to do a Yiddish project about what women went through in the Holocaust. I’d say, I don’t think that’s going to happen in 2025.”
The genesis of the words and images encompass poetry, memoir, and testimonials from Holocaust survivors, who lived in Toronto after the war. The Collective Poems was composed during a therapy group at Baycrest, a Jewish seniors’ home, that was organized by Paula David in the 1990s, and self-published in 1995.
Half of the Silent Tears project’s songs also tell the story of Molly Applebaum, who was hidden during the war in Poland in an underground, airless box, along with a cousin, by a farmer who both saved and sexually abused the two girls. Applebaum detailed her experiences in her 1998 memoir Buried Words, which was republished in 2015 along with her recovered diaries.
Lenka Lichtenberg, one of four vocalists who recorded songs on the album and a member of the Silent Tears touring production, had also been at work on an album called Thieves of Dreams, involving poetry she discovered in a notebook that belonged to her grandmother, also a survivor. In some of the Silent Tears shows, Lichtenberg, shares a couple of numbers from her own recent repertoire.
Silent Tears has been performed in Melbourne, Australia, in Japan, and in Taiwan, where 400 people attended.
“A local rabbi, Cody Behir, who speaks Yiddish, told me this was the first Yiddish concert ever presented in Taiwan—and 400 came to hear this concert program based on the experiences of Molly Applebaum and what she endured being buried under a barn in Dabrowa, Poland, and Anna Hana Friesová, Lenka Lichtenberg’s grandmother, when she was imprisoned in Theresienstadt,” said Rosenberg.
Rosenberg reflected on the astonishing, poignant moment after the company presented the work in Dabrowa, the town where the Polish farmer and his family hid Applebaum during the war, buried in a wooden box (with a tiny airhole) underneath the farm’s barn.
“Here you are in a small town in Poland, zero Jews live in Dabrowa, you have no home team whatsoever with zero Jews in the city, and that place was sold out. They had to turn people away. And they came to learn about what had happened in their town, about this girl [Applebaum] who miraculously survived.”
After the concert at the city’s cultural centre, a former synagogue, Rosenberg learned how committed one local teacher was to keeping these stories alive.
“That teacher got up after the concert and [said]: ‘I’m so glad you came all the way from Canada. I teach Molly’s book in my history class… and I could take you to the house where all of this happened.’
“We drove to this house that was on the small farm, and inside the house is a woman named Barbara, who was the youngest daughter of the family that hid Molly all those years ago… 87 now,” Rosenberg said.
During the war, Barbara and the other children on the farm were not told that Applebaum and her cousin were being hidden, for fear they would let the secret slip out.
Rosenberg notes that the complications in Applebaum’s story are part of what makes it fascinating.
The farmer was abusing Applebaum, who was 12, but at the same time he risked his life and those of his sister and her children who lived at the farm, Rosenberg notes.
“Hollywood portrays people as good and evil, and often life is much more complicated than that… and this farmer, who did a lot to save these two Jewish girls, also did some terrible, terrible things.”
The project’s musical-cultural inspiration is tango, which was popular in Eastern Europe in the 1930s, Rosenberg explains.
“Most of the composers were Jewish, and tragically most of them were murdered by the Nazis… I wanted it to sound like that period of Jewish music in Poland, and I figured Payadora would be perfect because they do tango.”
Violinist and composer Rebekah Wolkstein, who co-founded Payadora Tango Ensemble with Drew Jurecka, her husband and musical collaborator, originally came on to play violin, though wound up writing the majority of the Silent Tears material.
“It’s an honour to be given the opportunity to tell these women’s stories through the music. It feels very heavy, but also poignant,” said Wolkstein. “I learned that I can take stories and tell them through music of all kinds.”
Wolkstein says her musical studies of the great classical composers as well as her experience with tango and jazz music informed her compositions.
She calls Silent Tears “probably the most powerful and meaningful project I’ve ever been involved with,” though she found some material “particularly difficult… in terms of the stories and the lyrics.”
‘Victim of Mengele’
There’s a particularly harrowing track from the album called “Victim of Mengele.”
“I found it very disturbing, and to be able to compose music that was fitting, it had to be violent,” she said. “I grew up going to synagogue and so I found there were parts that should convey almost a prayer-like quality, like you would hear music in shul.”
She says it was profound to play last summer, “all over Europe… for Jewish festivals created and led by non-Jews and synagogues that have been rebuilt with such care and love. And there are no Jews to attend services, so they’re turned into museums,” recalling one restored synagogue in Austria.
“I leaned against a wall and they said, ‘no, you can’t touch the walls’… It was so ornate and beautiful, and so strange to be in this place that was sort of not real… The whole reason for the building had been destroyed and so it had turned into this museum piece of grandeur—but the history there was hard to fathom.”
Wolkstein says the project has helped her grow musically, and pushed her to delve into a topic that she had resisted for a long time.
“Having grown up hearing stories about the Holocaust, they were very scary as a young girl… I did not want to read any books about the Holocaust or watch any movies. It was just too upsetting.”
She found herself playing a more visible role in Silent Tears, which provided a new perspective for her.
“Suddenly I’m in these places, meeting these people, I’m representing my community… I felt very Jewish, especially in places where the Jews were wiped out, like in Poland… some of these towns there were none left, and to be a person bringing in this music, sometimes I felt like [I was] pointing a finger, and it was kind of uncomfortable to me.”
But the response has been inspiring, she says.
“I was astonished… people being willing to hear these stories. Everywhere we’ve gone the reception’s been really unbelievable. It’s not an easy show in any way and it’s challenging the audience so much… It gives me some hope that all these people have shown up and told us how they were touched and how the music helped them to hear these difficult stories.”
In Plonsk, Poland, the hometown of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, the town’s mayor took the stage to speak at the end of the show, says Wolkstein.
“He wanted the audience to understand what had happened in their own town. And he said, ‘It used to be over 50 percent Jewish, and we have no Jews left. And we have to remember, we have to remember what happened here.’”
Wolkstein felt goosebumps when the mayor spoke.
“It was so important to him that it never happened again and that everybody recognized what had happened to the community there, and then he took us on a tour the next morning and showed us all the sites where they’re commemorating the community,” she said.
“That’s what Silent Tears has done, is reached out across… so that there isn’t a divide… and found lots of support from non-Jews across the globe who are touched by the project. In a time when it feels like antisemitism is really on the rise, it’s kind of not been my experience because Silent Tears has been so well received.”
The company presented in four cities in Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel that brought extra security concerns for Jewish events worldwide. But there, too, the receptions were warm, including an unanticipated “superstar” treatment after a concert hosted by the Jewish community in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.
“When we came out of the backstage, there was a long line of people waiting to take photos with us and greet us as if we were mega superstars. It’s not normal for a project like this to be received in that way… people were so excited that we were coming, and the Jewish community was… just elated to have the representation to be able to come together and be a part of this project.”
Lenka Lichtenberg, whose vocals appear on two recordings on the Silent Tears album, says she surprised herself when she recorded the emotionally charged “Victim of Mengele,” which called for a range of expression.
“It couldn’t be too soft… too defeated, but some parts of it have to be like that… other parts have to be angry, and I found an angry voice in myself that I have never used… suddenly, there it was and I did [surprise myself] because I didn’t know exactly how to get into it,” said Lichtenberg, who notes the “harrowing” song doesn’t always appear in performances.
“It’s just too much for some places, but if we do play it, then we usually get the best response exactly for this because it’s just so dramatic,” she said.
Lichtenberg’s now presenting a solo version of Thieves of Dreams, called The Secret Poetess of Terezín, which premiered at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the one-woman production she says has “become more like a theater piece now” will be in New York in April.
Lichtenberg also presents the show, including projected images along with the music, in educational settings, from a Grade 3 and 4 class in Thunder Bay, Ont. up to postsecondary students at York University and the University of Chicago.
In some cases, like the Thunder Bay grade school, students might have never heard of Jewish people or the Holocaust if it’s not part of their school curriculum, she says.
“The music helps me, because when I’ve been talking for 23 minutes, I play a song, and it’s a song that is based on a poem by my grandmother. They’re looking at [a portrait of] her face [on a screen]… they totally accept it, and they actually really get into it…then they want to know more.
“And then I can tell them: What it’s like to be a minority and to be discriminated against? Has anybody here ever experienced anything like this? How would you feel if suddenly you had to leave everything in your home and go somewhere else? And when I ask this of these kids, there are hands that come up exactly with this question… they can relate to it.
“I walk out of that school and my heart is flying… I’ve just managed to give to these young minds something,” she said, including keeping the stories alive that she discovered in her grandmother’s notebooks.
Power of poetry
Paula David, who taught gerontology at the University of Toronto’s social work department for years, recalls how publishing the poetry of survivors 30 years ago changed their lives. In some cases, their families had never heard their traumatic stories before.
“They [the survivors] got this new status within the social strata of the community, which they had never had before, and confidence,” she said. “The families looked at them differently and for families, it really was a bit of a watershed because they could start talking to their parents more.”
Silent Tears found David going back to the survivor group’s poems and even pulling out unpublished material, some of it challenging work she thought that “probably would have shaken families and other residents up… they’re all long gone now.”
The journey has brought David to several “full-circle” moments.
The first live performance was held at the tail end of the pandemic at Baycrest which she says was “some kind of divine justice.”
“That it’s done what it’s done and it’s traveled where it has… is mind-boggling beyond anything we could have known.”
Rosenberg still keeps in touch with David from touring locations.
“All of these survivors that I ever worked with, their main theme for dealing with any of it was ‘nobody should forget… they should know my story. When I’m gone, people need to remember.’
“I think one of the reasons it’s resonating is because there are even more and more shattered populations around the globe, and this does take it beyond just plain words [which] hardly get to hit the depth of the emotion and the pain. And music is doing it, and I think it bodes well for the future for Holocaust education and post-genocide trauma education and communication.”
Thinking about the source of the work “makes it really hard for Holocaust deniers,” David said. “But nobody could have anticipated what’s happened. And it has really strong Canadian roots.”
The post ‘Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango’: A new Canadian music project gets Holocaust stories heard around the world appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters
An overturned auto in a car crash flipped on its roof landing on a mother and her three children, killing two children on March 29, 2025, in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A Brooklyn woman denied killing anyone when she appeared in court on Thursday, less than a week after a Jewish woman and her two daughters died when she crashed her car into them at a crosswalk.
Miriam Yarimi, 32, appeared in Brooklyn Criminal Court via a video stream from her room in NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn, according to the New York Daily News. She is undergoing a psychological evaluation at the hospital following Saturday’s deadly car crash.
After the crash, Yarimi told first responders she was “possessed” and believed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was following her. She has made similar claims about being pursued by the CIA on social media several times in the past, The Algemeiner previously reported.
Yamini, who is also Jewish, faces a slew of charges that include three counts of second-degree manslaughter, three counts of criminal negligent homicide, and four counts of second-degree assault.
“The devil is in my eyes. I am haunted inside. I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. Prove it. Show me the proof. You have no proof,” Yarimi said in a statement after Saturday’s crash, according to Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Nocella. “I need CT scans in my eyes. I need to get the scanning done now … Where’s my daughter? My daughter’s always in my heart.”
“People are out to get me,” added the single mother. “I need CT scans on my entire body. F— you. I need a whole work up to get whatever is in my body out of it. I did not hurt anyone. All the evidence is on my phone.”
Nocella called Yamini a flight risk and asked the judge that she be held without bail due to the “nature and severity” of the allegations, as reported by the Daily News. Judge Jevet Johnson agreed with Nocella and ordered Yamini to be held without bail. Nocella said prosecutors are prepared to present grand jury indictment on the manslaughter charges.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his administration is “committed” to taking more action to prevent traffic violence and deaths following the fatal car crash that killed Natasha Saada, 35, along with her daughters Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5. Saada’s 4-year-old son Philip was injured in the crash and is still being hospitalized in critical condition.
Adams’ office announced on Wednesday that there were 41 traffic deaths during the first three months of 2025 — 24 fewer than last year and the second fewest since they started being recorded by the city. Despite the decline in traffic deaths, Adams admitted that more work needs to be done to keep New Yorkers safe on the streets, as evident by Saturday’s deadly car crash.
“In order to make New York City the best place to raise a family, we need to be safer at every level — including on our streets,” he said in a released statement on Wednesday. “Our administration’s investments in intersection safety improvements, treating traffic violence as the serious crime that it is, and our expanding automated camera enforcement are all helping ensure we’re leading the way toward a safer future for all New Yorkers — whether they are pedestrians, cyclists, or motorists.”
“We understand there is more work to do, as evidenced this past weekend’s tragic crash in Brooklyn because one lift [sic] lost to traffic violence is one life too many, but our administration remains committed to reducing traffic violence as much as any other form of violence,” Adams added.
On Saturday afternoon, Yarimi crashed her car into an Uber and then slammed into four members of the Saada family as they were trying to walk across the street at an intersection on Ocean Parkway in Midwood.
Yarimi was speeding at the time of the incident, “probably doing close to twice the speed limit,” and “ran a red light” just before the crash, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez revealed on Wednesday while speaking to Eyewitness News. Yamini was also driving on a suspended license and has accumulated almost 100 parking and camera violations, including 21 speed camera tickets and five red light tickets.
“It actually exceeds just being reckless, it’s almost being wanton, we’re not going to tolerate that,” Gonzalez told Eyewitness News. “Her vehicle had been ticketed many times by red light cameras and speed cameras, that car was a frequent violator of both speed laws and red-light laws, and there is no excuse for running a red light.”
Saada and her daughters were buried in Israel this week. Four-year-old Philip remains at the hospital for his injuries and is facing “tough straights,” Gonzalez said. “We expect him to make some kind of recovery, but it’s going to be a long road for him.”
The boy lost one of his kidneys during treatment at Maimonides Medical Center, according to New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. “It’s heartbreaking,” Lander said after he visited the home of the Saada family, according to the New York Post. “He’s still in critical condition. He lost one kidney but they are hopeful about his prognosis.”
Five people in the Uber hit by Yarimi’s car suffered minor injuries.
Supporters of a proposed state law that would stop repeat super speeders in New York have rallied together since the car accident on Saturday, calling for the passage of the bill that they said could have prevented the crash. The legislation would require speed limiters to be installed on vehicles owned by repeat reckless drivers, like Yarimi. The device automatically limits the vehicles to within 5 mph of the legal speed of the road. The “Stop Super Speeders” bill was sponsored by New York State Assembly Member Emily Gallagher and Senator Andrew Gounardes.
The New York City Comptroller, Brad Lander, supports the bill and criticized Adams for not already implementing such measures.
The post Brooklyn Woman Denied Bail, Claims She Didn’t Kill Anyone in Car Crash That Killed Jewish Mother, Two Daughters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hungary Announces Withdrawal From ‘Political’ ICC as Netanyahu Visits Country, Defying Arrest Warrant
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks to the media next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Budapest, Hungary, April 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo
Hungary on Thursday announced that it will withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC) as the country welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the capital city of Budapest, defying an ICC arrest warrant against him over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
Despite Hungary’s status as a signatory of the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, Netanyahu was not taken into custody upon his arrival in Budapest. Instead, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban welcomed his Israeli counterpart with full military honors.
GREAT meeting with a GREAT friend, @PM_ViktorOrban. Together, we’re making the GREAT alliance between
and
even stronger! pic.twitter.com/Svphzb61Gn
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 3, 2025
Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary, which is scheduled to last until Sunday, is his first trip to Europe since the ICC issued an arrest warrant against him last year. In February, he made his first foreign trip altogether since the ICC’s decision to the United States, where he met with US President Donald Trump.
As Orban and Netanyahu met to discuss regional developments and bilateral cooperation, Hungarian Minister Gergely Gulyas released a statement announcing that “the government will initiate the withdrawal procedure” from the ICC, which could take a year or more to complete.
After their meeting, Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised Budapest’s decision to withdraw from the international court, highlighting the country’s “strong moral stance alongside Israel and the principles of justice and sovereignty.”
“I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC,” Saar wrote in a post on X. “The so-called ‘International Criminal Court’ lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for harming Israel’s right to self-defense.”
I commend Hungary’s important decision to withdraw from the ICC. FM Péter Szijjártó and I dealt with this matter extensively. The so-called “International Criminal Court” lost its moral authority after trampling the fundamental principles of international law in its zest for…
— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war. Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
After the court issued the warrant against Netanyahu, Orban rejected the decision by inviting the Israeli leader to Budapest and accusing the court of “interfering in an ongoing conflict for political purposes.”
During Thursday’s news conference, Netanyahu commended Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, calling it a “bold and principled action” as “the first state that walks out of this corruption and this rottenness.”
“The ICC directs its actions against us fighting a just war with just means,” Netanyahu said. “I think [this decision will] be deeply appreciated, not only in Israel but in many, many countries around the world.”
After the Israeli leader was welcomed in Budapest, Hamas issued a statement calling on the Hungarian government to reverse its decision and extradite Netanyahu to the ICC to stand trial, calling the decision an “immoral stance that shows collusion with a war criminal who is running away from justice.”
In a post on X, Israel’s top diplomat reiterated his support for Hungary’s decision, arguing that Hamas’s statement only proves the country is taking the correct stance in this matter.
“Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it,” Saar wrote.
“Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called ‘International Criminal Court.’ And that’s the whole story.”
Whoever needed further proof as to how justified, moral and necessary Hungary’s decision to withdraw from the ICC is: Hamas just condemned it.
Hamas is defending the politicized and twisted so-called “International Criminal Court”.
And that’s the whole story.— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 3, 2025
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
US and Israeli officials issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that launched the ongoing war in Gaza with its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2o23.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
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Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must
The Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
During the events of Purim, Haman approached King Xerxes I and said, “There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire who keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their laws are different from those of any other people, and they refuse to obey the laws of the king. So, it is not in the king’s interest to let them live.”
Queen Esther’s solidarity with her dispersed people in Persia, and her profound loyalty to her Jewish identity, saved them from Haman’s genocide and secured their self-defense when she courageously revealed her heritage to Xerxes I.
Today, Israeli Jews are once again fighting for their Jewish and Zionist survival. Since Oct. 7, 2023, this Jewish Armageddon has extended anew to Diaspora Jews, who have felt the past’s chilling draft. Antisemitism has reawakened, infecting non-Jews and Jews alike. Few people contribute to antisemitic attitudes more than “self-loathing” Jews. These “self-loathing” Jews, who cynically reveal only the negative aspects of their Jewishness, believe they can avoid antisemitic attacks if they condemn Israel. But they achieve only self-betrayal, gaining neither acceptance nor respect from those who hate all Jews. Jews are a nation of people who question, not people who answer.
Questions pervade the Jewish mind to such a degree that the adage, “two Jews, three opinions,” has become a common characteristic of Jewish identity. Moreover, the pursuit of an answer often serves as a springboard for further inquiry. For us, as Jews, the ultimate answer, akin to the messianic ideal, remains a distant, undefined future. This traditional perspective has granted Jews a sort of perpetual license to disagree. Jews enjoy engaging in debate with others, but they sometimes find particular delight in debating amongst themselves, which allows their intellects to roam and their sardonic wit to playfully engage with each other’s vulnerabilities, finding humor without causing offense.
This love for discourse, for questioning everything in sight, including Hashem himself, is by no means the only puzzle that makes up our Jewish identity. Another crucial element of our makeup is solidarity. In times of major upheavals, we have always stood together against the masses who rose against us. To our enemies, we Jews — atheists, nihilists, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, religious Zionists, non-religious Zionists, or undecided — look, taste, and feel the same. They care nothing for our ingrained liberalism. Our enemies seek cracks within our communities in order to break us apart and cause irreparable damage.
Years of relative peace and prosperity since the Holocaust have allowed us to gather again and engage in countless polemics over the fate of Israel, Jews, Judaism, and Zionism. However, we have failed to notice that we are at war again, and that our enemies eagerly exploit the divisions within a nation that comprises only 0.2% of the world’s population. These enemies — radical Islamists and progressive Western leftists who view Jews and Israel as white oppressors and colonizers — avidly listen to Jewish internal squabbles and criticisms of the Israeli government.
Despite the significant progress the Shin Bet and IDF have made in dismantling much of Hamas’s leadership and terrorist infrastructure, destroying its complex network of tunnels and command centers, and weakening Hezbollah, in addition to eliminating tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists, many Jews remain critical of, and disagree with, what Israel represents today. Aware of government problems, Israelis desire improvement. However, their rage and almost addictive pattern of anti-government protests have provided their adversaries with more opportunities to exploit perceived weaknesses.
This has resonated with some Jews worldwide. In New York, some Jewish intellectuals have defended “free-Palestine” and pro-Hamas protesters harassing Jewish students, invoking freedom of speech. They appear to have fallen prey to what they perceive as the lies of progressive anti-Zionist media, which systemically omits crucial facts about Israel. This includes the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties, and its role in eliminating thousands of Hamas terrorists and dismantling their terror network, which posed a significant threat to Israel (and innocent Palestinians themselves).
These “romantic” progressive Jews also forget that no matter how critical they are of that “brutal” IDF, it is still fighting on their behalf, because it is fighting on behalf of every Jew. Civilian deaths do occur, but they are either unfortunate incidents of war or, more often, a direct result of Hamas’s cruelty, as Hamas terrorists purposefully embed themselves within the civilian population. I once sat at dinner in Israel with a wealthy American Jewish couple who came on a sympathy tour a few months after Oct. 7. Nevertheless, the husband was convinced that the IDF was deliberately killing Palestinian children.
Those were wealthy, educated American Jews who thought they were charitable because they donated to Jewish causes, and therefore, believed they had the right to express their views on everything. This is where I, a Soviet Jew who grew up deprived of Judaism yet targeted by antisemitism, felt differently. To begin with, the husband was completely wrong. Second, in times of existential crisis, we, as Jewish people, must set aside our irresistible urge to disagree and criticize Israel on basic premises such as Israel’s fight to ensure Jews don’t live through a second genocide. The freedom to speak our minds has been ours for thousands of years. We conversed with Hashem, we obeyed Him, we sacrificed for Him, and then we quickly learned to disobey and question Him, even before we began arguing amongst ourselves.
Still, throughout our dotted and punctured history, it wasn’t our tongues or our disagreeable minds that kept our small nation together; it was our solidarity. In solidarity, we walked out of Egypt. In solidarity, tens of thousands of Eastern European Jews came to their promised land as early as the 1920s and began to build from nothing. In solidarity with his orphans, Dr. Janusz Korczak, despite being given the chance to save himself, chose to march with them, hand in hand, through the ghetto to the deportation point, on their way to Treblinka, where they met their final hour. In solidarity with other Jews across the Soviet Empire, Soviet Jews secretly tried to remember who they were, despite years of persecutions and purges.
In solidarity with their Soviet brethren, powerful American Jewry fought for Russian Jews to be able to emigrate to Israel and the United States. One of the main reasons our small nation has not disappeared into the abyss is because, in Diaspora, across oceans, and through impenetrable iron curtains, we never ceased to support one another. We knew we could not afford the luxury of neglecting our faith, traditions, and, most importantly, we could never abandon defending ourselves against our enemies.
Caesar’s “Divide et impera” (“Divide and Conquer”), though a cliché, is particularly relevant here. Seeing fractures within our communities, our enemies have intensified these divisions through incessant anti-Zionist and antisemitic propaganda and violence. Therefore, only as an undivided people, united by a single purpose — eradicating our enemies and protecting our promised land — do we stand a chance of survival. Perhaps only then will the day come when Jewish people gather on virtual street corners to argue and ask questions to which they seek no answers.
Anya Gillinson is an immigration lawyer and author of the new memoir Dreaming in Russian. She lives in New York City. More at www.anyagillinson.com.
The post Jewish Individualism Will Not Work, But Solidarity Must first appeared on Algemeiner.com.