Shorter Toby Katz:
Secular Jews: Evil.
Secular Jews with advanced degrees: Evil squared.
Hasidic Jews: Awsome.
Yom Hashoa: Bad for the Jews, (and created by bad Jews, besides)
What follows are the innocuous comments I made to her post, comments that will, no doubt, be deleted by COB.
Toby: In a similar vein, Victor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, describes how those of his fellow prisoners who were religious Jews, especially chassidim, were able to keep up their will to live in the concentration camps. They maintained their internal spiritual independence and superiority to their Nazi captors, while people who had lost all sense of meaning in their lives, especially the most assimilated German Jewish professors and doctors, quickly succumbed to despair and threw themselves on the electrified fences. He writes that the religious Jews had a sense of themselves as part of the flow of Jewish history and could make some sense of their ordeal, while the most secular Jews could not make sense of any of it and were in a state of shock and disbelief
DovBear: At best this is selective history; at worst it’s wishful thinking. Though Victor Frankl may have chosen not to write about it (I have not read his book) other historians tell of hasidic families that (lo alainu) sold their daughters for bread, and worse. It’s a terrible slander, and a terrible generalization to say that “most assimilated German Jewish professors and doctors, quickly succumbed to despair and threw themselves on the electrified fences.” Though you may choose to believe that secular Jews lost their dignity, while religious Jews did not, the real world is not nearly so neat and tidy.
Toby: We have a date for remembering and grieving and weeping over our losses. That date is Tisha B’Av.”
DovBear: It’s simply not true to say that Tisha B’av is the only day for mourning. As noted, we have other fast days (including tzom gedalia) and Sefira which (according to Samsom Repahael Hirsch in Chorev) has as much to do with the Crusades as it does with the loss of Rabbi Akiva’s school. We also have the long established right to establish, as a community, days for mourning, for repentance, and for celebration.
Yom Hashoa isn’t rejected by the Haredim “because we have Tisha Bav.” It’s rejected by the Haredim because it wasn’t their idea, with the business about Tisha B’av being a convinient dodge.
