A most important criteria for leadership positions
January 19, 2010 Holocaustism, Jewish Community
Some of you may wonder, what makes a person a Jewish leader? I think the answer is obvious. It is, “He or she that is descended from Holocaust survivors.”
Just ask Menachem Rosensaft. Rosensaft writes in Huffpost,
Hannah Rosenthal, who was appointed as the State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in December, is not only superbly qualified to spearhead the US Government’s efforts to mobilize international opposition to a centuries-old scourge that has once again become a clear and present danger of ever increasing dimensions. She brings to her office the unique perspective of a daughter of a man who was persecuted and tortured for no reason other than the fact that he happened to have been born a Jew [...]
But Mr. Rosencraft, how significant is the fact that she is a descendant of Holocaust survivors, really?
One of Rosenthal’s most significant credentials in her new post is her identity as the daughter of a survivor of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald, the same camp that President Obama visited last June.
That tells us a lot about her, but tell us more about her dad, since this is very important to us and to her position.
Her father, Rabbi Franz Rosenthal, was arrested by the Gestapo in Mannheim, Germany, during the November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, and spent almost a year as an inmate at Buchenwald.
Okay, but does her father’s history only entitle Hannah to be a leader of the Jewish community?
Rabbi Rosenthal’s incarceration at Buchenwald and his experiences as a refugee in this country forged his daughter’s identity as a fighter for human rights and against not just anti-Semitism but all forms of racism and bigotry.
Reading this essay, I am humbled. Not only as someone not descended from Holocaust survivors do I have no right to demand to be a voice in the community, I have no right to offer an opinion on anything in the U.S. regarding how to grapple with oppression or racism.
Questions of affirmative action, reverse discrimination, immigration, etc., must be left to the leadership of Holocaust survivors’ descendants only.
No one else is qualified.
8 comments
While I see your point – her father’s experiences are irrelevant to her qualifications – you have to recognize that this is simply not true much of the time.
The Bronfmans are major world leaders and have no ties to the Holocaust.
Furthermore, given its extent, you’d have to try really hard to find an Ashkenazy Jewish family that didn’t have someone they lost in the Holocaust. It’s like trying to find someone to run West Germany after WW2 who wasn’t a Nazi. So this kind of comment is going to creep up time and time.
And finally, you should recognize how lucky you are.
>> And finally, you should recognize how lucky you are.
low blow.
No, I meant that completely sincerely. If DK doesn’t have a Holocaust story in his family then he and his relatives are very forrtunate people not to have suffered. Anyone who knows survivors knows they don’t wear their “I was in Auschwitz and all I got was this lousy tatoo” with pride. They’d much rather have sat the whole thing out from very far away.
Garnel, there is a lot of browbeating done in the name of Holocaust, both inside the community, even more strangely, externally, in a myriad of ways.
The Bronfmans are major world leaders and have no ties to the Holocaust.
That’s only because they’re one of the wealthiest Jewish families in the world. DK’s point is that when one doesn’t come from great wealth, and wants a position of influence, Holocaust descent is another type of currency.
Furthermore, given its extent, you’d have to try really hard to find an Ashkenazy Jewish family that didn’t have someone they lost in the Holocaust.
Mine didn’t – at least, no one of whom I’m aware. Everyone we know of got out late nineteenth, early twentieth century. I probably did have fourth or fifth cousins who died. How far out do we go, Garnel? Eastern European Jews constitute what sociologists call an “isolate”, so that the degree of kinship among them is significantly closer than it is among the general population, but I’ve read the most distantly you can be related to anyone is fiftieth cousin. So who isn’t family – someone who doesn’t have a Yiddishe neshomoh?
I have family members that survived, and family members that did not.
But groups are irrelevant to whether or not I should have a position in the Jewish community, at the UN, or in the White House.
Whoa, I’m not disagreeing with your main point. You are right that what my parents went through is irrelevant to whether or not I should have a position of leadership. Each person should get a job based on personal qualifications, not yichus.
Perhaps my community is different but “My folks were in the Holocaust” doesn’t seem to carry special currency when it comes to community leadership positions.
I bet Garnel didn’t lose any relatives in the Shoah, either. He just likes bitching and moaning about imagined grievances.
What a whiner. Sheesh!
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