lEWmT
64 Years
Sewing
Pactlic
Northwest
Jewri/
Our 64tli Year
Since 1930 the only weekly publication serving Jewry of the Pacific Northwest
An Independent Newspaper
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief SAMUEL KAPLAN
Advertising Manager RON FREEDMAN
Editor ARSELA FRIEDMANN
City Desk LYNDA ROSENBERG
Published 47 times per year by Anglo-Jewish Publishers Ltd. 3268 Heather St., Vancouver, British Columbia V5Z 3K5 Subscription in Canada: $42.00 per year plus $2.94 G.S.T.
This publication rarely comments editorially on films, but there are exceptions.
Like Schindler's List, on which we previously editorialized last August.
The film by Steven Spielberg is a masterpiece in its graphic depiction of the travail of European Jewry. As one Holocaust Survivor has noted, this single film has done more to sensitize people to the agony of Jewry during the Shoah than all the novels and historical treatises which deal with the same subject.
Like all works of art it is not flawless and the critics have not lost any time with their carping (see Page Five Commentary).
Many have faulted Spielberg for making a movie about a virtuous Nazi. Others decry the anonymity of the Schindler Jews as they are seen in the film. A third group of critics has expressed resentment over the use of color in the film's final moments and a fourth contingent has condemned the use of "Jeru-shalayim Shel Zahav" in the film's final moments.
There are also commentators who have ventilated concern over the use of Israeli Hebrew in one of the Cracow scenes and Israeli-accented English in others.
All these criticisms remind one of the dictum
would say no to circumcision
By ILANA RAPHAEL
In response to Rabbi Shlomo Riskin's comments about the Isaac story {J WB Oct. 28/93), let us consider a few of the points he left out.
Circumcision, if we recall, was essentially a deal between men. Sarah was neither informed nor consulted when Abraham, in one of his inspired moments, hiked up to a mountain peak to sacrifice his son — the son that the 99-year-old Sarah carried around for nine months, give or take; the son that belonged to Sarah as much as to Abraham.
We know how the story ended: Isaac was spared death, and instead simply forfeited his foreskin, a tradition that would become the hallmark of Jewish physical identity; a sign that G-d spared Isaac; and that Abraham was finally willing to sacrifice, (or as Rabbi Riskin puts it, to finally put the needs of his own family before those of Lot and the extended world he represents).
What we may not remember is that circumcision was one of the more modernized forms of sacrifice. Sacrifice was the fashion of the Biblical day, and humans were not exempt.
Prior to the notion of A G-d, Jewish ancestors, too, partook in the tossing of children into fiery pits to assuage the gods. Existential anxiety was high then. G-d was the weather, a sunset, a bad crop. And wives had little say about the practices set about to appease the gods. A wife could rarely anticipate when her husband would decide to sacrifice their child.
If we ask ourselves why the Covenant was not made with Sarah, as indeed many women have asked themselves, it is because she would have never gone for it.
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Today, circumcision is a sacred bond between men and whatever else it symbolizes. It also represents women's exclusion from the decision in the sacrifice, the decision to sacrifice, how to sacrifice, and how much to sacrifice.
Let's face it. Sarah wasn't even notified until Abraham came down from the mountain.
When he finally did, Abraham had accomplished the feat of making the act of sacrifice symbolic. Instead of offering an entire body, G-d could be satisfied with just a piece of it. Like the blessing over the bread which symbolizes thanks for our food we don't offer thanks for each mouthful. When we light a candle at Chanuka, it is similarly representative — it helps us remember the longevity of the Temple, but we do not light our houses on fire in order to remember.
liana Raphael Is a social issues and fiction writer from Vancouver.
Likewise, the changeover to circumcision ushered in the beginning of a time when people began to make internal sacrifices, instead of unnecessary bonfires.
Today, with health and self-preservation increasingly precarious and precious commodities, we cannot avoid examining whether, as we become more humane, our sacrificial practices could again be improved.
It would seem outrageous to many that we could exchange the circumcision rite for an alternate ceremony in which we step on a glass, plant a tree, get drunk, get our baby drunk, or, simply, cut and plant something else.
Perhaps we are not ready. Perhaps we have not earned the relief from our own barbarism because we remain, as is widely throught, not entirely consolidated in our faith.
And of course, we still do not consult modern Sarahs when we awake in the night with ideas of what should be done.
Perhaps, instead of sacrificing parts of our children, we might simply consider alternatives: better faith in G-d, and more faith in ourselves.
attributed to New York literary critic Susan Sontag, who observed in her book. Against Interpretation. that "criticism is the compliment that mediocrity plays to genius". It is clear that in the case of Schindler's List, the critics are pygmies when compared to Spielberg's towering achievement.
Caryn James is one of few commentators who has identified the architecture of that achievement. "The relentless narrative drive with which Mr. Spielberg depicts the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto — for example, some people in hiding, others shot in the snow, thousands herded into a camp — adds the visceral power of fiction to a technique borrowed from documentaries about the Holocaust.
"As with documentaries, the viewer is put in the position of being overcome by the savagery on screen and then is made to witness more of it, then to endure even more, until the enormity of the Holocaust, becomes the inescapable point."
Golden Globe winner Steven Spielberg may or may not win the Oscar for his work (there are too many imponderables in Hollywood). But he is certainly deserving of the Israel Prize.
No one before him has harnessed art to so effective a reconstruction of the Holocaust. Nor communicated the Shoah to the world so compellingly.
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From Page 2
requested anonymity said that Peres had indeed taken up the issue with Icelandic leaders but said that Iceland's hands were tied because the country of 250,000 was not a party to any international treaties regarding the prosecution or extradition for war criminals.
Zuroff acknowledged that the request for a posthumous inquiry was "unconventional."
"But because of Mikson's popularity in Iceland, we're afraid he will be honored posthumously and this is terrible," he said. "He committed horrible crimes."
Cartoonists 8 Writers Syndicate
— Dr. Ronnie Miller's book. Following the Americans to the Persian Gulf: Canada. Australia and the Development of the new World Order, has just been published by Far-leigh Dickinson University Press.
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Good to know we're not alone
Dear Mr. Kaplan:
Thank you so much for printing the article "Solidarity menorahs respond to hate", {JWB Jan. 27) about how the Christian con>munity in Billings,' Montana put paper menorahs in their windows to support their Jewish neighbors against anti-Semitic violence.
It's important for Jews to remember that we do not stand alone, that we have allies out there whom we can trust.
ELIZABETH SHEFRIN
Dear Mr. Kaplan:
I must respond to a serious problem that seems to be gaining some momentum. In a recent letter (JW^^ Jan. 20) the question was raised, "What are our greatest responsibilities as Jews in 1994?" The answer given was perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust. The method proposed was sending young people on the "March of the Living".
While I will not argue against the great importance of remembering the Holocaust and remembering our past, I believe a great deal of false hope is being placed on these European adventures as an educational tool.
1 read a very moving account of the experience of one of the girls while on the March of the Living. The writer, a Jewish girl, was a student at a private Catholic girls school. I am sure that whatever practical effect the March may have had vanished as soon as she stepped off the plane and went back to school. Honestly, how long will she remain Jewish?
What is really needed is to see a true "March of the Living" — to see living Jews. What every Jewish young person should see is a Simchat Torah in Bobov in Brooklyn, N.Y. led by one of the last great living Survivors, Grand Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam); a true Jewish wedding; Jewish professional offices in New York, with their large mezzuzas proudly displayed.
They should visit Jewish schools in Chicago, or experience kosher restaurants in Los Angeles, or attend an afternoon Mincha at the offices of Friedberg & Co. or Olympia & York in Toronto. They could also take a trip on the Satmar Bikur Holim bus, or sit in on a Gemara class by a well-known psychiatrist in Pittsburgh, or a cardiologist in Sko-kie, or a lawyer in Brooklyn.
The most effective, reliable and readily available means we have to fulfil our responsibilities to our children is not a trip to Europe, but an unadulterated, unapologetic. and undiluted formal Jewish education, right here, right now, no excuses!
Judaism is about life and living. Sadly, in Vancouver we have focused so much on emulating the dead that we have become dead ourselves. The fastest growing Shabbat observing visibly Jewish population in the Lower Mainland is located at the end of Marine Drive in New Westminster. Will a trip to Europe change this trend?