A few years ago an American Indian friend phoned me, absolutely perplexed. He could not reconcile two stories in his morning paper – one in the news section, the other in sports. Both were about major Florida universities.
The first story reported universal outrage at and severe sanctions on a fraternity which had hosted an event where participants dressed in blackface. The leadership of the university spoke in strong language about not tolerating racism, the hurt of stereotypes, the psychological impact of dehumanization, and the incompatibility of such offensive behavior with the standards of a university.
The second noted, without comment, that the leadership of another Florida university (which had an Indian mascot) was encouraging students to show up at a major sporting event in red face.
As the evening shadows fall upon Jerusalem, and Yom HaShoah (the memorial day for the Holocaust, according to the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943/5703) is ushered in, the official ceremony at Yad Vashem is never free of an internal built-in tension. It is an official, orchestrated act of the State of Israel, with all that this entails — the central role accorded to political leaders, the presence of a military guard of honor, the presentations treading the path of a well-established ritual.
Many young people find themselves somewhat alienated by the formal and forbidding proceedings. And yet there are moments of heartbreaking humanity, as the stories of the six torch-lighters — one for every million murdered — are told in their own words; as young Israelis, singers and choirs, give words and music to the agony and loss; and sometimes, when the words spoken, even by officials, do reach beyond the worn phrases and remind us of our duty to commit to what those terrible years have taught us.
When I recently asked some friends which chapter of Jewish history should be mandatory knowledge for all Jews, some chose the exodus from Egypt, others the establishment of modern Israel and some the emergence of prophetic Judaism.