New York – The Holocaust, whose memory usually serves as an honored shared point for the Jewish community, sometimes is a point of contention for haredi Jews, who say they feel excluded from mainstream histories of the period. Those histories, and exhibits in Yad Vashem, emphasize the exploits of secular partisans and pay less attention to religious Jews who resisted the Nazis by studying Torah in ghettoes and keeping the commandments in death camps. For many Orthodox Jews, the day of mourning for Holocaust victims is Tisha b’Av, which commemorates the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and other Jewish tragedies, not Yom HaShoah.
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Dr. Meir Wikler, a psychotherapist who lives in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, has met with Yad Vashem officials for several years in an effort to sensitize them to the concerns of fervently Orthodox Jews. He discussed the topic with The Jewish Week.
Q: Why do haredi Jews object to Yad Vashem’s presentation of the Holocaust’s history? Because of what’s there or what’s not there?
A: There are videotaped testimonies of only two haredi survivors in the New Wing of the museum. Compared with the 50 or 60 testimonies of non-haredi survivors, it gives the mistaken impression that hardly any haredi Jews survived, and by extension, that haredi Judaism did not survive the Holocaust. And the truth is that at least half, if not more, of all survivors were haredi. And there are only scant illustrations of the countless examples of spiritual heroism, relegating that key aspect of Holocaust history to barely footnote status. The description of Harav [Rabbi] Michoel Dov Weissmandel, of blessed memory, [who led an effort to save Jews from the Holocaust] depicts him as having been naïve and duped by the Nazis. The truth is just the opposite. He was a brilliant rabbinic leader who outwitted the Nazis at every turn.
I agree with this rabbi. Because whoever build the Yad veshem are not haridim so y should they care. But in a side note god knows the truth and that’s what’s counts
I was always bothered by the fact that the chareidim don’t stop for a moment when the sirens sound to remember the fallen IDF soldiers and those murdered in the Shoah. Is this too much to ask?
So they do not commemorate the shoah, do not contribute to Yad Vashem, do not honor the fallen Tzahal soldiers, blame the shoah on zionists, but now want to control how others observe?
As the younger generation becomes more distant from the Shoah, especially among the younger chareidim who’ve been taught that it was a “punishment” from the ebeshter for various avayros of secular yidden, its not suprising that there are such divergent views. It also doesn’t help that the chareidim have such contempt for the medinah and institutions such as the holocaust museum which they view (for whatever reasons) as a government institution.
also the holocaust was and is somewhat of a taboo subject in some parts of the heridie world. and is still not discussed studied in many yeshivas since it is hard to explain from a religious point that G-d could destroy his chosen people like that
Chazal say that we only observe ONE day for the breaking into the Bais HaMikdosh even if 17 Tammuz was when it happened during Bayis Shayni. Throughout our history we have observed the sad day ON Tisha B’Av. That being said most Shomray Torah U’mitzvos recite a few kinos which were written for Churban Europe.
shvigger, why is it chukas hagoy? I don’t think that pausing to remember the dead is a goyishe zach.
This thing about “Spirtual Heroism” is an interesting concept. I’m all for Spriitual Heroism. That gets points in the next world. No question. In this world though, heroism needs to take the form of an M16 in the enemy’s direction.
For Yizkor I sometimes attend a chareidi shul.
What bothers me is that there is no public Kel Moleh Rachamim said for the 6 million.
It is an out and out SHANDEH !
What I think Charedim dont quite get is that incorporating the Shoah into Tisha B’av has a downside — that the uniqueness of the Shoah in which a full third of our people were lost — will get lost in the context of, say, Kinot for the Crusades. The Shoah really was in a category all by itself. Its not less of a tragedy then, say, Tzom Gedaliah which has its own day just fine. What I think is really going on is that there is a mentality that if the Rabbanut did it, it must be wrong…