posted by Dawny Gershkowitz

This time following Passover has several days for remembering.

Tomorrow we remember the six million we lost in the Holocaust. As a daughter of survivors, I find this day so terribly painful… I cannot help but think of my parents, aunts, uncles, and what they endured; of my grandparents and the aunts and uncles who did not survive. And when I recall the stories that my parents, after more than twenty years of silence, were finally tearfully able to share,  I become emotional and often speechless.  

Next week we honor Israel’s fallen soldiers and the victims of terrorism.  The numbers are fewer, but the pain is no less.

We follow that day of sadness with a celebration of Israel’s statehood, a refreshing and even much-needed day of rejoicing.

I will celebrate that day.  But in the back of my mind lurks the gnawing knowledge that we can never take our freedom and our joy for granted.

Director Gloria Greenfiled, producer of The Case for Israel, recently undertook a painstaking examination of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in the world.  Seventy interviews and three years of meticulous research led to a powerful and frightening analysis of how anti-Semitism, often under the facade of anti-Zionism, has spread.

created at: 2012-04-19UNMASKED Judeophobia examines the political assault against Jews and their right to self-determination. ‘Judeophobia’  conveys the intellectualized hatred of Jews that is flourishing in many parts of the world ,” said producer Gloria Greenfield.”

Jews are facing a threat much greater than a military menace in the battlefield or a traditional terror in urban centers.  They are facing the possible uprooting of the very idea that there should be a nation state of the Jewish people.

The term, ‘Judeophobia’, and the movie bearing that name, might seem anxiety-provoking.  But as Ms. Greenfield points out, just knowing the current situation would create some level of anxiety. The world now sees state-sanctioned calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, along with public calls for killing Jews wherever one finds them.  

However, it is denial that she feels should create the most anxiety.  “To appreciate the outcome of denial and apathy, one only has to look back at the 1930s and 1940s,” said Ms. Greenfield.

Tomorrow, I will look back, I will remember the six million.  Next week I will remember and honor the soldiers and the victims of terrorism.  But remembering is not enough.

We must pay attention to the world today, we must respond to the threats we face.  

Please join us at Temple Emunah on Sunday, April 29, at 8:00 PM to see  Unmasked: Judeophobia and for a Q&A opportunity with director Gloria Greenfield. Reserve your seats now.

 

 

See Rabbi Lerner’s and Rabbi Fel’s interview with Gloria Greenfield: 

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