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The Holocaust memoir so heartwarming it had to be fake | Salon Books

7 January 2009 By 2 Comments

The Holocaust memoir so heartwarming it had to be fake | Salon Books.

Jan. 7, 2009 | Novelist and editor William Dean Howells famously told Edith Wharton that the problem with American audiences was that they always wanted “a tragedy with a happy ending.”

That longing explains what led to the recent controversy over Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust memoir, “Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived,” now canceled by the publisher Berkley Books, though a film version may still be in the offing.

I know this story. I grew up hearing this story, I think… Sometimes memory does not serve, it dictates. I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard this story, but I know that I know it.

I think it’s a shame. People neeed something to cling to, who cares if it’s made up? Have you watched Jacob the Liar? So now we know, so publish it anyway, just not as truth.

I ordered a ton of Holocaust DVDs from NetFlix a little bit ago. From love stories to tales of Dr. Mengele, I watched them all. A little bit of romance is welcome in that onslaught of images.

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I’m Still Waiting For You, Rivki – News

11 December 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’m Still Waiting For You, Rivki

KATAMANDU, NEPAL — (December 7, 2008)

Chani Lifshitz

Chani Lifshitz, Chabad representative in Katamandu, Nepal, wrote a letter to her close friend, Rivkah Holtzberg, following the tragedy in Mumbai. Lubavitch.com presents a translation from the Hebrew that appeared in the Israeli paper, Yediot Achronot.

(lubavitch.com)–”Write,” you told me only two hours and ten minutes before they entered your home. “It’s been a long time since you wrote anything about shlichus,” you noted. “Write something, Chani, for me!”

So I’m writing you, Rivki. For you, my confidant for the last four years.

I’m Still Waiting For You, Rivki – News.

I know, I’ve posted the hell out of this Mumbai tragedy – there are tragedies happenineg every day, why not post about those? Mainlybecause itmes about Mumbai find their way to my screen, and other items do not.

This is just heartbreaking and demonstrates how lost one can feel sometimes. It’s hard to go on when you lose a friend, relative, anyone really, but to lose them in such a violent way, and not really know what happened. I just can’t imagine.

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Speech of Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, published in Maariv on Monday, July 31, 2006.

10 August 2006 By Leave a Comment

Speech of Ehud Olmert, Prime Minister of the State of Israel, published in Maariv on Monday, July 31, 2006.

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana.  Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures.  There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy.  Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel.  I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.  We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off.  If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana.  Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.  Here, there and everywhere.

The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon.  We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens.  No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children.  This anarchy is over.  You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe.  In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you – just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again.  Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers.  Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives.  Now we have our own air force.  The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction – those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children.  They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.  Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack.  This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all.  You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us.  But to kill us?  Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.  The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians their a chance to build a new reality for themselves.  The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this?  Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement?  Ehud Barak’s peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children.  I don’t remember you being so enraged then.  Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium?  Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya?

What can you do – that’s the way we are.  We don’t wave body parts at the camera.  We grieve quietly.  We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy’s children – we express genuine sorrow and regret.  That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies.  Now they have risen up against us.  Tomorrow they will rise up against you.  You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror.  And you will taste more.

And Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza  — what did it get us?  A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers.  Then too, I don’t recall you reacting with such alarm.  And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism, and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem – and from there to Paris and London.  An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees.  And make no mistake – we won’t go down alone.  You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy.  I don’t recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq.  Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans – and the world remains silent.  And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya.  And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population – then you also kept silent.

What is it about us , the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don’t?  In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize.  I will not capitulate.  I will not whine.  This is a battle for our freedom.  For our humanity.  For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders.  It is also your battle.

I pray and I believe that now you will understand that.  Because if you don’t, you may regret it later, when it’s too late

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Interesting take on delegating responsibility to children

11 November 2004 By

Teaching Our Children Responsibility
By: Shea Hecht
————————————

I learned that there is a difference between teaching our children responsibility and making them our servants. One evening while sitting in someone’s home for a meeting I noticed their twelve year old daughter making a phone call that was clearly for her mother. When she finished that call, her mother asked her to make one more call. When I concluded my meeting, I asked the mother why her daughter was making these phone calls. She answered that she thought this helps teach the child responsibility. I told the mother that from what I could see, unless she suffers from a language barrier and is therefore unable to make the call, if she asks a child to make a call that is clearly for herself the only thing that she has taught her child is how to transfer responsibility.

After this encounter I did an unofficial study by asking the children who come into my office for counseling how they feel when their parents give them responsibilities. The result of my “scientific study” was that, for most children, the way they felt depended upon the circumstances. The children told me that when their parents asked them to do different tasks — make a phone call, go to the store, etc. — and that task was for the sake of the child or for the family as a whole, it taught the child responsibility. When the task was clearly for the parent’s own convenience, the children felt used and it taught transference of responsibility. In the future, these children just learned to ask their younger siblings to do tasks for them. The experience had taught them that the older and stronger have permission to exploit the younger and weaker.

>From my conversations with these children I was able to break the “responsibility vs. slavery” issue into three parts. Firstly, when a child is asked to do something for the household, if everyone takes part in it then the child will not feel used. For example, if there’s a party and you ask each child to give up some time and do something, then it’s regarded as a common effort. Even when it’s mundane household chores, if they are split with some calculation a child will generally do them without resentment. For example, if the boys and girls in the family are on different school schedules, and the boys help when they are home and the girls do their share when they’re available, then children can sense a fairness and won’t complain.

Secondly, it’s important to make children feel that they’re not just givers but also receivers of the aid that they are expected to contribute. For example, when you asks an older child to help the smaller children with homework, you can also promise the older child that you’ll help him with his school work when the younger children are in bed and the house is quieter. This teaches the child that the stronger help the weaker and the bigger help the smaller.

Thirdly, parents need to treat their children as children — not as spouse replacements. A woman can’t say, “my husband comes home late and can’t help me, so my teenagers will help me parent instead.” Many years ago when fathers went off to war or to work away from home they would tell their young child that “you are now the man of the house” and “take care of your mother.” A six year old couldn’t handle that kind of responsibility. Neither can a 16 year old today. A parent asking and expecting a child to do an adult’s job is taking advantage.

None of this negates the fact that we can expect our children to help out in times of crisis — in times of sickness, pregnancy, or tragedy, G-d forbid. But even at times like this, when a parent feels the need to give extra responsibility to a child, it should not be done by dictating but rather as a request and with explanation. A parent can tell the child, “I know it’s not your responsibility, but this is the help we need now.” It’s a chessed — a kindness — for the child to help the parent.

In conclusion, when we ask our children to help with something we must ask ourselves two questions: 1) Who
se job am I asking the child to do? 2) Am I giving the child this job to teach responsibility, or am I shirking my own responsibility? A parent that can answer these two questions by honestly saying that they are doing it for the child’s sake will indeed be teaching their child responsibility.

- Rabbi Shea Hecht is chairman of NCFJE ( National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education), the trailblazing social services and outreach organization directed by his late father, the famed Rabbi J. J. Hecht. Rabbi Shea Hecht also co-hosts on the WWRL 1600 morning show and is a communal leader and activist in the Crown Heights Jewish community.

(To view this article on the Web, or to post a comment, please click here: http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?aid=214128)

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09 June 2004

9 June 2004 By

I wish we had more stores open by us 24 hours a day with lower prices, I’d buy there in a heartbeat. This is *why* I shunned wal mart for so long. Sadly, it sucked me in, b/c it’s convenient to let my 4 y/o run around there at midnight b/c the park isn’t open. It’s convenient for me to buy their clothes there b/c for the price of one organic, US grown and made shirt, I can buy an entire new wardrobe for one of them.

Wal-Mart nation: the race to the bottom

By Floyd J. McKay
Special to The Times

Los Angeles is not my kind of town. But the Angelinos are about to take a stand that ought to be applauded across the country.

That stand is to say “no” to a Wal-Mart “supercenter” that the retailing giant hopes to open in the city.

These superstores are not your father’s Wal-Mart; they are monstrous, sprawling over some 25 acres and employing up to 600 workers. Their lure, of course, is lower prices.

Wal-Mart, it seems to me, epitomizes the race to the bottom that has the United States by the throat as the 21st century opens.

Why do people shop at these behemoths, when they know full well that they are driving out of existence small businesses owned and operated by their neighbors, employing other neighbors?

They shop because of price, and they are forced to do so by the declining standard of living we have offered working people for more than a generation. People who work for minimum wage, with little or no benefits, who cannot afford to fix their car or their kids’ teeth have no choice but to search out the lowest price.

Wal-Mart buys offshore, without apology and for the cheapest possible prices, from companies paying the lowest-possible wages.

As jobs in America are lost to foreign sweatshops to feed the Wal-Mart engine, American workers are forced to accept jobs at lower pay, with bad working conditions. They are funneled to Wal-Mart’s promise of cheap goods, in effect patronizing the very companies that caused their economic misery.

This is a cruel travesty on working people in this country.

Wal-Mart is currently being sued in some 40 cases charging various abuses of labor laws, and last fall it was reported the company extensively employs illegal aliens as janitors. Wal-Mart has successfully opposed unionization and frequently pays well below competing stores.

All of these practices ? alleged abuses of labor laws, hiring illegals, and the low rate of pay and benefits at Wal-Mart ? serve to depress the labor market in communities in which the giant is located. That is a major factor in Los Angeles’ opposition to the supercenter.

We live in a nation in which the real-dollar income of an average family has declined for years, while corporate profits and executive pay have skyrocketed.

The gap between rich and poor has widened at an alarming rate in the past 20 years. In 44 states, the gap has increased not only between rich and poor, but between rich and middle-class families. None of the six exceptions is a Northwest state. Oregon has one of the worst gaps, Washington is about average.

In some states, the inequity is staggering. In three of the nation’s largest states ? California, New York and Ohio ? families in the lowest 20 percent bracket actually lost real income from 1978 to 2000. In 1999 dollars, the loss was between 5 and 6 percent. In those same states, the real income gain for the top 20 percent of families ranged from 37 to 54 percent.

Nationwide, from 1978 to 2000, the lowest 20 percent of families gained only $972 annually, or 7.1 percent; the top 5 percent gained $87,779, or 58.4 percent.

These findings, by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (www.cbpp.org), were before the Bush tax cuts and the current recession, both of which will further widen the gap.

You can’t blame Sam Walton for this disparity, but operations like Wal-Mart feed off the impoverishment of America.

Sadly, there are byproducts in quality of life, often unseen until it is too late.

The greatest is the destruction of America’s small and mid-sized towns, increasingly bereft of s
mall businesses and dominated by big-box retailers ? acres of barren asphalt parking lots, corporate managers on their way to the next-larger store, employees scrambling to keep low-wage jobs.

My wife’s recently deceased aunt could no longer shop in the small Iowa town where she and her late husband ran a feed store. The store is closed, as are the other small businesses. The elderly woman had to drive ? or be driven ? past the empty shops several miles to Wal-Mart, the nearest place to get the basics of life.

Wal-Mart is like a neutron bomb, sucking life out of small towns, leaving buildings without the essence of civic life.

Those of us fortunate to earn middle-class incomes can make a choice, and shun Wal-Mart. The tragedy is that for an ever-increasing segment of America, the despicable race to the bottom has left no other choice than to shop for cheap, regardless of the consequences.

Floyd J. McKay, a journalism professor at Western Washington University, is a regular contributor to Times editorial pages. E-mail him at floydmckay@yahoo.com

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