Category: Jewish News and Commentary

This section is home to everything Jewish, including my commentaries, book reviews, podcasts, books, and other projects.

Rabbi Firestone Opens My Eyes on Holocaust Trauma Inherited by Future Generations

My Publishers Weekly interview with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone was an eye-opener to me inherited Holocaust trauma because it helped me fill in the gaps on why anti-Semitism anywhere in the world has such an impact on me. When I read about anti-Jewish violence or bigotry, I do feel like it’s happening to me, personally, even if it’s halfway around the world to people I do not know.

In our interview, we talk about how descendants of Holocaust survivors inherited the trauma, and how we can channel it productively. This hit home for me.

The phenomenon is real—kids, grandkids of Holocaust survivors suffer from extreme stress.

The solution is to do what many Jews already do—channel that pain into easing the suffering of others. Yes, she used the words “Tikkun Olam,” which causes many an eye-roll these days because it is an overused expression. But, you know, I have no problem with the idea of repairing the world and making it a part of your own private Judaism. I’ll explore Tikkun Olam more in future posts.

For Firestone, though, doing things for other people, picking “Jewish” professions like medicine, social work, is all part of healing from this genetic memory of suffering.

“The main point is that that we can’t change past events, but we can change the outcome of those events. And we can’t change tragic history, but we can choose the legacy that we want to pass on,” Firestone said.

Read the whole interview, linked below.

Rabbi Examines Inherited Holocaust Trauma

In August 2017, when neo-Nazis rallied in Charlottesville, Va., Rabbi Tirzah Firestone received calls from her worried congregants in Boulder, Co. who, perhaps for the first time in their lives, felt personally victimized by Nazis. They couldn’t sleep at night. It seemed to them it was happening all over again. More here

May 22, 2019
Paks 1918: A Hungarian Pogrom and a Prelude

This is a kind of memory of a memory. It is my grandfather’s childhood accounts of a Hungarian pogrom and other anti-Jewish violence and blood libel. Longreads says this takes 17 minutes to read. For slow readers like me, longer. It took about 100 years to write, from the time my grandfather experienced it then told it to my brothers and me. It’s part of a memoir I’m writing about my grandfather, Judaism, and other ghosts.

By the way, I was looking for historical references to the Hungarian pogrom described by my grandfather. I found it in the American Jewish Year Book. These disturbing accounts were of anti-Jewish violence well before the Holocaust. These were post-WWI. Click for a closer look.

There is much to unpack in the excerpt, from Hungarian pogroms to my grandfather’s memory of family and the town in which he grew up, to an actual instance of blood libel. In future posts, I’ll explain more about what my grandfather witnessed.

Paks 1918: A Pogrom and a Prelude

Howard Lovy retells his grandfather’s childhood accounts of anti-Jewish violence and blood libel in pre-Holocaust Hungary.

On the banks of the Danube, there is a place where the great river takes two sharp 45-degree turns, making it difficult for ships to pass unseen. For centuries, this feature made the city, nestled within, a fortification against foreign attack. But from an enemy inside the city’s own boundaries, there was no natural protection. And for a 9-year-old boy, hiding as his neighbors ransacked his grandparents’ home, a wine barrel was the only shelter. There he hid, silent, while around him echoed the muffled, angry, anguished sounds of a pogrom.

Read the entire book excerpt on Longreads.

May 19, 2019
Jewish OCD and the Ghosts of Yom Kippur Past

One of the themes in my memoir-in-progress is the complex relationship I’ve had between my lifelong struggles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the comfort of Jewish religious rituals. In this segment, which ran in Longreads, I am eight years old and struggling with both as best I could.

At the time I was aware I was different, and thought differently, but I did not know what to call it. I was decades away from identifying what I had as OCD. To me, it was all wrapped up in the other way I was different from my classmates. I was a Jew in the South.

It was not until I worked at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in the late ’90s and early ’00s that I officially, in my own mind, tied the two together. I received a press release from a psychologist warning that Jewish women with OCD have problems around Pesach, obsessively cleaning out chametz. It was a eureka moment for me as I looked at my own past.

This is an idea explored in my memoir, that the comfortable rituals of religion can also be manifestations of a Jewish OCD mind in never-ending loops.

I wondered if Grandpa — who to me was almost God himself, and who surely knew God — had had to control his thoughts the way I do in order to survive in that place where everybody was Hungry, where everybody hated Jews.

Harnessing His Superpowers for Peace in the Middle East

As an 8-year-old with OCD, Howard Lovy hoped his magical thinking might persuade God to end the Yom Kippur War.

… I turned away in shame. To me, the head nodding, the clucking, the shoulder shrugging, the sniffing, the spinning, and repeated touching of objects … all of it, all my rituals, they were God, or a test by God, a test that I failed every single hour of every day.

God tested me to see if I could stop it, and I could not. But if I could use the obsessive side of the obsessive-compulsive partnership, then I could obsessively summon up the willpower to resist engaging in the noises and tics. Wasn’t that what God did to the heroes in the Bible?

The rabbi once said in a sermon that Moses must have been staring at the burning bush for hours before he determined that it was not being consumed. “Think about it,” he said. “Have you ever stared for that long at a burning object? It could take hours to see that the fire was not consuming it. Moses must have been a very contemplative man.” Well, if you ask me, it was an obsessive commitment. I know how Moses’ mind worked.

Read the entire excerpt in Longreads.

May 15, 2019
From Lipstadt, I Learned How Antisemitism is the World’s Oldest Conspiracy Theory

I learned a great deal from my Publishers Weekly interview with Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt. When I talked to her, it was just before the 2019 Women’s March, and Jews were trying to decide whether to ignore the antisemitism of the movement’s leaders and attend, or skip the march entirely. Deborah was strongly on the side of not attending.

She was promoting her latest book, Antisemitism: Here and Now. We talked about why this ancient hatred is rearing its ugly head again, and how antisemitism is like herpes. “I think of antisemitism as the herpes in society; it keeps asserting itself at times of tension, at times of dislocation, and that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing it.”

‘Left Wing’ and ‘Right Wing’ Antisemitism?

Most of all, though, Deborah connected the dots in many ways for me on how anti-Semitism is the world’s oldest conspiracy theory. The Holocaust scholar helped me realize that there is fundamentally, no difference between “left wing” and “right wing” antisemitism, since they all draw upon the same mythology of secret Jewish power, money, control, and dual loyalties. This is why if Israel went away or if Zionism never existed, so-called “left-wing anti-Semitism” would still be around. Anti-Zionism is the excuse, the drawing-room and academic-conference respectability the antisemitism virus feeds upon. But it could always find something else

Deborah also allowed me to use the entire interview in my Emet – Truth podcast. I begin with my own first antisemitic experience from my early childhood in Georgia. Then Deborah and I discuss a range of topics, from the Women’s March to Alice Walker to the roots of antisemitism and what we can do about it.

You can read my Publishers Weekly interview with Deborah Lipstadt here, or click on the arrow below for the full half-hour interview.

Listen to the Podcast

May 15, 2019
In Search of the American Jewish Future

In an article for Publishers Weekly, I asked Jack Wertheimer, author of The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today, whether the current rise in anti-Semitism is leading to increased Jewish religious involvement. His answer did not make the final edit in my piece, but here’s what he said about how anti-Semitism impacts the American Jewish future.

“Synagogues have served as gathering places at times of stress and Jews who otherwise might not attend on a Friday night or a Sabbath morning do attend when there’s some major crisis. Does that translate into ongoing Jewish religious involvement? I haven’t seen evidence of that.”

He may be right, but Wertheimer was measuring specifically Jewish religious involvement and not this feeling of cultural solidarity that the rise in anti-Semitism has created between Jews. Most religious Jews dismiss “cultural Judaism” as not sustainable. I am not so certain.

My complicated relationship with Judaism is handled in my memoir-in-progress, but I’m searching for how others connect. And I’ve interviewed many Jewish thinkers over the years, and most of them say that this notion of Judaism without God or synagogue is not sustainable. I’ve been told this by rabbis of all denominations for 35 years. Yet cultural Judaism endures.

As for synagogue-based Judaism, Wertheimer seems more positive, since Jews previously on the fringes have been forcing synagogues to change and adapt for them. I know I’m a little out of date, but I remember how attending B’nai Jeshurun on New York’s Upper West Side was almost akin to going to a Broadway show. I’ll have more to say about “BJ” later, since it appears in my memoir, but here’s a link to my full feature on Jack Wertheimer.

The American Jewish Future May Be Found in the Margins

Pinning down how Jews in the United States practice their religion can be tricky, since there are so many ways they define themselves. So, is there a way to corral the disparate pieces into a full picture of American Jews? Professor of American Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary Jack Wertheimer says there is, and it’s precisely this diversity and constant state of innovation that gives him some hope in a future for U.S. Jewry. More here.

Longer Version of Wertheimer Feature

Or, you can read the unedited, 1,140-word version at this link from my old Patreon page, which goes a bit more into Wertheimer’s thoughts on whether the current rise in anti-Semitism is bringing American Jews back into synagogues. He also talks about Tikkun Olam as a phenomenon among progressive Jews and whether that translates into Jewish religious commitment. You might be surprised by his answers. More here.

May 15, 2019
Anti-Semitism on the Left: What Happens When Your Cause Turns Against You? Podcast

Gretchen Rachel Hammond

Today you’re going to meet two people, two Jewish activists who thought they were fighting alongside people who believed as they did, who believed in social justice. But found, instead, that their status as Jews placed them apart from their peers. It surprised them at first, this anti-Semitism on the left.

Jews are used to Nazis. But when Jewish activists face hatred from the left, it stings harder because these are people who are supposed to have their back. And this seems to be happening more and more. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, it’s spilling over into blatant anti-Semitism on the left.

There are those who say that we shouldn’t confuse the two. But it’s getting more and more difficult. Somehow, through layers and layers of mythology about Jews and about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Jews are being made to feel uncomfortable, and in some cases, actually purged, from causes they believe in.

Nisi Jacobs

Gretchen Rachel Hammond lost her job after her coverage of the Chicago Dyke March in 2017. That was when three Jewish women were kicked out of the demonstration for waving a Star of David pride flag. But there’s so much more to Gretchen’s story. Listen in her own words.

Nisi Jacobs has been marching for social justice for a long time. So, of course she was with the original Women’s March to protest President Trump. Then, suddenly, the Women’s March stopped being about women as the leadership pivoted to embrace anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan and attack Israel. Nisi talks to me about what she and other Jewish women did next. They launched the Women’s March for All. But, of course, there’s much more to Nisi’s story.

Listen to the entire podcast below.

May 8, 2019