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April 23, 1993 - Image 5

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1993-04-23

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Community Views

Editor's Notebook

Confronting The Nation's
Holocaust Memorial Museum

Is Dialogue Possible
For Jews, Christians?

GARY ROSENBLATT EDITOR

THE REV. JAMES R. LYONS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

The weather in
Washington is
perfect only a few
days a year,
spring days when
the sun is warm
and the cherry
blossoms are in
full, and fleeting,

bloom.
It was on just such a day in
May 1978 that President Jim-
my Carter hosted Prime Minis-
ter Menachem Begin and
hundreds of American Jewish
rabbis and leaders on the South
Lawn of the White House to cel-
ebrate Israeli Independence
Day. It was a tense time in U.S.-
Israeli relations. The hawkish
Mr. Begin was not Washing-
ton's favorite Israeli leader and
the administration was push-
ing hard to sell 60 F-15 fighter
planes to Saudi Arabia, a move
that the organized Jewish corn-
munity opposed.
So when Mr. Carter sur-
prised many in the crowd by an-
nouncing the appointment of a
special commission to explore
building a Holocaust memorial
in the U.S., some observers felt
he had come up with a clever
ploy to appease the Jews. After
all, nothing unites the Jewish
community more than remem-
bering the pain of the Holocaust
and taking pride in the State of
Israel. By embracing Israel's
prime minister while pledging
to create a national Holocaust
memorial, Jimmy Carter com-
bined both touchstones that day.
Smart politics.
J
Those thoughts came to mind
\;''' on Monday, another postcard-
perfect spring day in Washing-
' ton, as I entered the imposing
new U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum, the end result of the
pledge Mr. Carter made that
day 15 years ago "to insure that
we in the United States never
forget."
I have always had mixed feel-
ings about the Holocaust Memo-
rial Museum. Over the years,
during the endless controver-
sies about whether it should be
built, by whom, at what price,
and whose suffering it should
highlight, I have thought that
the $169 million expense would
be better spent ensuring the
Jewish future, through educa-
tion, than honoring the Jewish
past, no matter how deserving.
I cannot help but think that
many of the six million Jewish
victims would have felt that
their martyrdom could best be
honored through guaranteeing
that future generations would
remain Jews.
The Holocaust was a Jewish
tragedy, and it is remembered
most honorably and movingly
by Yad Vashem, the national
Holocaust museum of Israel.

Wouldn't an American Jewish
community consumed with wor-
ry about its own survival do bet-
ter to spend tens of millions of
dollars on improving its Jewish
educational system and send-
ing youngsters on inspiring trips
to Israel? And besides, what
connection does Washington
have to the death camps of
Auschwitz and Treblinka? Why
would vacationing families vis-
iting the Washington Monu-
ment and the FBI building
spend several hours walking
through a museum filled with
images of death and suffering,
a nightmarish reminder of

An exhibit at the museum

man's limitless potential for cru-
elty?
Having spent almost three
hours touring the new museum,
and being impressed with, and
at times overpowered by, its
awesome construction and
stark, harrowing exhibits, those
questions remain. And I have
others. Will Christian Ameri-
cans come away from this mu-
seum wondering why the Jews
have been victims so often
throughout history? Is it not
troubling that people who know
little about Jews will leave this
museum understanding far
more about how Jews have died
than how they have lived?
But the Holocaust Memorial
Museum is no longer an intel-
lectual debate. It is a concrete
reality. And by any standard
measure, it is a monumental
success. It tell:; the story of the
Holocaust simply and shatter-
ingly, through the use of docu-
mentary film, photos, oral
histories and artifacts. Walking
through a boxcar once used to
transport victims to the con-
centration camps is eerily
haunting, and one can only
imagine the fear, the screams
and the suffering that took place
there.

The museum intends to dis-
turb as well as inform, and it
does both, forcing the visitor to
think about the unthinkable.
But there was an element of
voyeurism I felt in watching
footage of naked men and
women being executed or study-
ing a detailed scale model of the
Auschwitz crematorium that
disturbed me in a different way.
Did I really need to see all of
this graphic agony? Weren't the
victims entitled to some mea-
sure of privacy? I know that his-
torians and survivors are
obsessed, understandably, with
refuting the obscene claim of re-
visionists that the Holocaust
never happened. But I found the
moot testimony of the exhibit's
personal artifacts — trays of
scissors, toothbrushes, razors,
and hairbrushes — far more
emotionally powerful because
they engaged my imagination.
For me, the most haunting
artifacts were the thousands of
worn shoes of all shapes and
sizes displayed in one area and
the ark of a German synagogue,
destroyed on Kristallnacht,
which the Nazis had defaced by
attempting to scratch out the
Hebrew inscription whose
translation reads, "Know before
whom you stand."
At times during my visit, I
felt I was standing in a sacred
place; at times I felt I was vio-
lating the victims' private
agony; at times I felt I was hon-
oring their memory. Each per-
son will take away a different
feeling, or many, even conflict-
ing, feelings. What's important
is that one goes and confronts
the museum.
Idealists can go on complain-

Now that
the museum is a
reality, it is time
to bridge our
past and future.

ing that Jewish money should
have been spent on our Jewish
future, but realists know that
no educational project or enter-
prise, however grand, could gen-
erate the kind of fund-raising
that the Holocaust Memorial
Museum did.
Now that the museum is a
reality, it is time to bridge our
past and future, to inspire our
children by having them con-
front the preciousness of their
sacred heritage.
For me, that defaced Holy
Ark was the most terrifyingly
appropriate symbol I took away
from the museum, the message
that no evil can totally obliter-
ate the eternal Jewish people ❑

Having spent
the last eleven
years dealing
exclusive- ly
with relations
between Jews
and Christians,
it might seem
strange to 'ask
if dialogue is possible. Allow
me to assert from the very
beginning that it is not only
possible but absolutely nec-
essary. However, with a few
notable exceptions, it has not
yet taken place.
There are many reasons
for the failure of dialogue to
move forward. As one who
has worked closely with Jew-
ish scholars and religious
leaders in the United States,
Europe and Israel, permit

me as a Christian to reflect
on the problems regarding
dialogue that I have met in
the Jewish community.
First, dialogue is not a pri-
ority among Jews. At best,
discussion is based on the
horrible events of the past
(and no one can deny how
horrible they were!) where
Jewish participants feel the
need to "educate" Christians
about these events. In oth-
er words, instead of dialogue,
there is an on-going mono-
logue about the failures of
Christians and Christianity,
with little or no recognition
that the Christianity being
discussed is not the majori-
ty Christianity of today. I
asked the late Rabbi Marc
Tannenbaum what he was
going to do with Christians
like me who have dealt with

The Rev. James Lyons is the

executive director of the
Ecumenical Institute for
Jewish-Christian Studies.

the past, who teach other
Christians about it, and
who regularly call for con-
tinuing reform within
Christian theology. He
looked surprised, and then
quietly said: "I don't know!
We haven't learned to deal
with Christians like you."
I believe that Jews need to
make dialogue a priority,
and that the dialogue must
be between equals with
mutual respect!
Second, dialogue must
involve some risk-takers
who are willing to distin-
guish between those Chris-
tians who, based on an
understanding of the past,
are working to ensure that
such events will never hap-
pen again, and those who

have not yet moved to that
point. I remember talking
with a survivor, and asked
how, given his experiences,
he could ever trust any
Christian. He answered
simply: "Because of my ex-
periences, I know the dif-
ference between those of
goodwill and the others."
Third, Jews must ap-
proach any dialogue with
Christians without a sus-
picion that makes honest
discussion possible. When
Emanuel Rackman, writ-
ing in the Jewish Week, ar-
gues that dialogue
between Jews and
Catholics is not possible
‘`. . . so long as one side has
not abandoned its religious
obligation to convert the
other to its faith," he is not
talking about the Catholics
I know and meet, nor has
he kept current on
Catholic theolo gy.

DIALOGUE page 6

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