Community Views

Editor's Notebook

A Still, Small Voice
Serves As A Reminder

Lighting A Candle
In Memory Of Caring

STACIE FINE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

City, express their Jevvishness, usual-
where I live when ly blending elements of the dom-
I am not working inant cultures in which we have
in the Detroit lived. History also teaches us that
area, is holding a such explorations are usually met
special event this with hostility and suspicion: the
priests versus the rabbis; the
fall.
The Jewish mystical Kabbalists versus the
congregation and establishment; the Chasidim ver-
a local church are sus the Mitnagdim; the Zionists
co-sponsoring the showing of the versus the traditionalists; the
documentary Anne Frank Re- Haskala-niks versus the religious;
membered, a chronicle of her story the Reform versus the Orthodox;
with interviews and never-before- Yiddishists versus Hebraists.
Our history is one of creative
seen footage of Anne Frank. The
showing of this film has brought exploration and redefinition and
up many significant issues for me. then the response to those forays.
First, there is the story of the Because I am a veritable "cholent"
Frank family and Anne herself. ofJewish experience, I have been
Anne Frank is a Jewish hero. Her privy on a personal level to as-
courage and insight, strength and persions cast by Jews against oth-
humanness help us to compre- er Jews, and it is not pretty.
It seems in some people's
hend an event whose enormity
confounds us. She, like the bibli- minds there are "real Jews" and
cal Abraham, teaches us sweep- "not real Jews," or at least some
ing historical events through the of us are "more Jewish" than oth-
eyes of a single, comprehensible ers. Ask anyone to name the ma-
jor branches of modern Judaism
character.
The profundity and insight in (or look at The Jewish News syn-
her diary inspire and sadden me, agogue page), and you will almost
for her lost potential, and perhaps invariably get a list in "descend-
for those unfulfilled skills and ing order" ofJewishness: Ortho-
dreams of my own.
We do not necessarily
come to know history
through its epic battles as
much as through the qui-
et voices of individuals.
Painful stories must be
told with the same vigor
as victorious ones, and
then retold and retold
again, until we see the
humanity of history's
players. Nothing less em-
powers us to shape the
events of our own lives.
A quiet element in the
Frank story interests me.
Anne Frank is indis-
putably Jewish. Yet in the
Secret Annex, her fami-
ly celebrated St. Nicholas'
Day, a European part of
the Christmas holiday.
Here and now, many
might denounce this sec-
ular, assimilated family
as "not Jewish" or "not
good Jews" or "not as
Jewish" as some of us
who do not celebrate such
holidays.
Anne Frank, right, and her older sister, Margot.
But the Franks were
indisputably Jewish, and no one dox, Conservative, Reform and
would dare decry them today. "Other," for Reconstructionists,
Hitler made no distinctions be- Humanists and Secularists.
This order is neither chrono-
tween Orthodox or secular, cul-
tural or religious Jews. In that logical nor alphabetical, but it is
terrible machinery, we were all almost always the response I get
or read in Jewish publications.
Jews, and we still are.
Jewish history teaches us that What we learn from this is that
Jewish people have always there is a deeply ingrained per-
sought new and different ways to ception that our Jewishness is di-
rectly proportional to traditional
religious behavior, at least in
Stacie Fine is community
development director for the
emotional perception. Yet when
we step back from history and
Society for Humanistic
look at the many-faceted diamond
Judaism.

Traverse

ofJewish life, we are all still Jews,
just like the assimilated Frank
family.
The documentary about Anne •
Frank also includes interviews
with righteous gentiles, people
who helped to rescue Jews dur-
ing the Holocaust. In her book
Conscience • and Courage: Res-
cuers of Jews During the Holo-
caust, author Eva Fogelman
states that rescuers of Jews had
little in common: They were rich
or poor, educated or illiterate,
women or men, city dwellers or
country folk.
Her extensive psychological
profile contains only one similar-
ity: common values instilled in
the rescuers during childhood.
These values included tolerance,
respect for differences, a person-
al sense of worth and an ability
to identify with people different
from themselves.
What do we teach our children,
grandchildren and friends? Al-
bert Schweitzer said that setting
an example is not the main thing
in teaching morality; it is the only
thing. Ms. Fogelman concludes
that love is the foundation of con-
science.
Few of us will be called
g upon in our lifetimes to
perform such tremendous
acts of bravery, but each
c T - ) of us is called almost dai-
g- ly in smaller ways to
make a difference.
We hear friends at cock-
tail parties making a
racist joke, or see children
taunting another child on
a playground. We hear rel-
atives disparage a partic-
ular temple or shul or
rabbi.
We see our community
representatives fail to in-
clude all branches of Ju-
daism in programs and
events. We ourselves fail
to reach across lines of
gender or orientation or
affiliation or religion to in-
clude others in our circle
of caring.
In every instance, we
have a choice, free will, to
agree through our silence
or to speak up. Judaism
teaches us that we must
find our voices. It is indeed
our duty.
We are not being asked to risk
our lives, just to better them.
No, we'll not be asked to hide
a family or rush into a burning
building, but each and every day
we are each called to choose be-
tween silent safety and coura-
geous raging against the "dying
of the light," as Dylan Thomas
said. Each day we must choose.
Herein lies the spiritual path of
Judaism: It is not only about at-

(

VOICE page 31 • .

Yitzhak Rabin
was standing
behind a podi-
um in a Mon-
treal hotel. He
was closer to me
than my televi-
sion is to my
family room
sofa.
This. was three years ago.
We'd been scanned by security
guards and even sniffed at by
some sort of threatening-look-
ing dog, but I remember think-
ing, this is too easy. He could be
touched.
I had this fleeting thought
last year around this time.
That's when Binyamin Ne-
tanyahu came to Detroit to
speak at the Holocaust Muse-
um dinner. The afternoon of the
evening he was set to speak, Mr.
Netanyahu met with several lo-
cal supporters at a parlor get-to-,
gether in Bloomfield Hills.
There he was, eating lunch
and then speaking with about
30 people in the open hallway
and dining room. To repeat my-
self, he could be touched.
He talked of Rabin's failings,
of the peace process as a give-
away. It was only days before
Mr. Rabin would be killed. It
would be short months before
Mr. Netanyahu would take over.
We have a phone signal at
home for emergencies over
Shabbat. Thank God, we have
not had to use it much at all.
Our family, located all over the
place, is fully aware of what to
do to find us.
On the Sabbath of Rabin's as-
sassination, I was learning
Torah with my friend Sasson
Natan at his house in South-
field. We were well into the
teaching, when a knock came at
the door. It was my wife, Lisa.
She had one of those looks on
her face that we all dread. It
didn't take an analyst to un-
derstand that she was upset. I
looked from the opposite side of
the room and I mouthed with-
out saying the words, "What's
wrong? The kids?"
She told me to come from the
dining room into the kitchen.
There she told me I should sit
down.
"What, what?"
Then she told me that Rabin
was dead.
It came first like the three
bullets that felled him.
"Rabin was killed," she said.
"[Atlanta Jewish Times Edi-
tor] Neil [Rubin] signaled. Can
you please come home?"
I was hollowed out empty. I
remember when JFK was as-
sassinated. My fifth-grade
teacher, Mrs. Miller, was called
to the office over the intercom.
When she • returned, this

bedrock of a woman, quick to
discipline and impatient with
poor work, was reduced to
tears.
When I got home that after-
noon, my mother was in tears.
My dad was home from work
early. There was something very
wrong.
Now, my children watched as
Lisa and I entered our home.

Yitzhak Rabin: He could be touched.

They saw their father crying.
There was really not much
else to do at that time. There
was a buzz in shul in the early
evening. People had somehow
heard already.
After Havdalah, I remember
standing in front of CNN for an
hour, taking in the darkness,
watching football score after
football score scroll with irrele-
vance on the bottom of the
screen underneath the scenes
from Israel. The phone didn't
stop ringing.
That night at Book Fair,
everything was secondary to the
events of the day. Many of our
neighbors came to Book Fair that
night not to buy anything, but re-
ally just to be around other Jews.
Now, it's been a year. Our
coverage package suggests that
there's an apathy in Israel to-
ward Rabin's death and work.
While I didn't agree with
everything he did, or even parts
of Oslo, I certainly never
thought that within a year's
time so much would happen to
turn the course of events on its
ear. -
But Rabin's death did some-
thing else to me as well. I don't
feel the permanence or sense of
security I once felt. Besides Ra-
bin at Montreal and Ne-
tanyahu here in Detroit, I
remember Shamir in a Balti-
more Convention Center hall-
way, just standing around with
a couple of guys with radios.

CANDLE page 31

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