One time the silence won a huge victory, I did not make a nedder (take an oath)-then, never again! By Aharon Moshe Sanders, June 28, 2010 Parshas Pinchas
Never Again Shall The Silence Prevail Over The Lies!
Strong words right?
When I was a mere child of five, I lived by a certain code, it went like this:
Sticks and Stones may break my bones; but names will never hurt me.
When I was an undergrad learning at Santa Monica College, I got more than my share of all that a California Community College could give, at a price that everyone could afford. Yes the 80′s were good to me!
A random person came up to me as I was standing in front of the Student Government Office of Santa Monica College and looked me straight in the eye, and told me about his goal of German unification. I stood there and listened quietly as he told me his well crafted lie, that the Holocaust never happened. While I, the proud child of a small family of Jews who survived the Holocaust in Poland, in hiding, remained in hiding and said nothing. It was then, that the silence had is moment of victory over the truth. I simply listened, walked away, shaking my head thinking:
Sticks and Stones may break my bones; but names will never hurt me.
A silent mantra that I could say over and over again in my head. A little childhood chant that kids all over the US would say anytime someone calls them names.
Just yesterday, I met with my mother and her sister Elizabeth and her grandson. While I was with my daughter, three generations of proud Holocaust survivor who were not taught by my grandfather, the Patriarch of the Family, to have a victim mentality but rather we were given the tradition of being proud and victorious survivors! Not that there were not some losses, and fear, and hunger while this family, my family, survived the Nazi’s reign of terror in Poland. Yes, we were taught to be proud, because we (they), survived!
Now, as I told you earlier, I was sitting at a small table in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While my family and daughter were looking for some kosher snacks, a fellow approached me and asked:
Are you not afraid to wear your Kippah right here in public? I looked at him and wondered and thought, is he an orthodox Jew who is being more Yeshivish than I because he knows the proper Halacha (Jewish Law) regarding not wearing a kippah (yarmulke head covering worn by orthodox Jewish males) when one is having a snack at a local snack bar that does not have a kosher hecksher.
However my questioning eyes, did not find this in him, and I responded or course not, where are you from?
He told me he as from Norway and had witnessed what nearly amounted to a public lynching when Jews were carrying an Israeli flag at some sort of rally in Onslaw Norway. He showed me on his arm that the bearer of the Israeli flag was attacked with the very flag he carried and he was badly beaten and bloodied.
Thinking that this was another visceral response to the recent Flotilla multi-media extravaganza anti Israel propaganda action, asked him if this was a response to the Flotilla incident. He said no, this happened several months ago. He then went on to tell of the extreme antisemitism that apparently has been raging all over Europe for some time. I was shocked, but not into silence as I was back in the day at Santa Monica College.
As my family members came back from foraging for food in the at the Metropolitan Museum of Art snack bar, the man bid me farewell, and think he said Hatzlacha (be strong) as he pointed to my Kippah. I told my family this story although I did not get the reaction that I expected.
Former Mayor Of NYC Ed Koch and my mother Irene Sanders at Holocaust Commemoration. (WAGRO)
I am not sure if my daughter was listening when I told that I was planning on writing about this interaction on my web site. Indeed I do remember writing about the incident at Santa Monica College on one of my older websites back in the day of world wide web.
Aharon Moshe Sanders
June 28, 2010 7:05AM EST
PS: The amazing thing that happened this shabbos was about reading group of us reading about the covenant of the Bris being given to Pinchas as a result of his zealous action in support of Hashem bringing an end to the plague, while there also was a bris (circumcision) in shul Moshe Aharon ben Pinchas. The opening paragraph we read at a circumcision (bris) relates to the action taken of Pichas as a zealot for Hashem that we read in the same Parsha, and then proceeded to the ritual of the bris all on the same shabbos, right here in Passaic NJ at PTI.
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