10 May 2 • 2019
jn

When we read the names … Six 
million are pulled from the grasp of 
the ovens.
Departed souls … eternal blessings 
… transformed to assume new 
lives. 
For with each name … sisters, 
brothers, cousins, nieces and 
nephews … Rabbis, bakers, scholars, 
doctors, tailors, housewives, children 
…
Blessed memories … spring to life. 
You can almost see them … 
dancing in the moonlight to the 
fiddler’
s strains … Dancing in the 
moonlight … when we read the 
names.
Close your eyes and welcome 
them. Acknowledge them before 
you … One mother’
s softness. A 
father’
s strong arms. A baby’
s soft 
bottom.
The fragrance of every Bubbie’
s 
kitchen and every Zaydie’
s weathered 

chair … The fringes of tallit and the 
cantor’
s soaring prayer. 
When we read the names …
They are present once again. 
Reunited, they gather as if 
beckoned from afar.
Can you feel them? Hear them?
The rhythmic chanting of pious, 
bearded men. Women and children 
laughing … Released from the 
darkness of history’
s cruelty to feel 
cool breezes against their skin. 
We hold hands with the sun … 
illuminating a world long gone.
And those lost are found … when 
we read the names. 
 
Heads bowed … we weep. 
Davening, we whisper beneath our 
breath … 
“We shall never forget you.
“We shall remember you and carry 
you with us throughout time.” 
And that is why …
We read the names. ■

SUSAN ROSS SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
When We Read The Names

views

poem

phobia. The fear of Jewish communism 
in the 1920s and the recent fear of 
Muslim terrorism parallel one anoth-
er — each wildly extrapolates from the 
prominent role that a few members of 
an immigrants’
 community of origin 
played in violent upheaval to condemn 
an entire community of immigrants as 
a threat to stability and the American 
way. 

SIMILAR CHALLENGES
Despite the backlash, Jews and Muslims 
searched for social acceptance and a 
sense of rootedness in American soci-
ety. This search led them, inter alia, to 
imagine the arrival of their ancestors 
in the New World even earlier than 
the historical record indicated. For 
American Jews, this meant embracing 
the (historically unfounded) notion that 
Christopher Columbus, or at least one 
of his sailors, was Jewish — or, at least, 

crypto-Jewish — thus including Jews 
among the first Europeans to set foot in 
the New World. It is not at all surpris-
ing that American-Muslims imagined 
something analogous: namely, the first 
Eurasian explorers of the New World 
were Muslim sailors. These were not 
expressions of Muslim supremacy or 
Jewish chauvinism; rather, an exercise 
in embracing and celebrating a new 
home.
The possibility of social acceptance 
increased the threat of assimilation. 
Indeed, Muslims and Jews have faced a 
similar challenge of balancing between 
the pressures of the melting pot and the 
need to preserve their own identities. 
Here, again, a time lag of several gen-
erations. First- and, to a lesser extent, 
second-generation Jews found this bal-
ance by sending their children to public 
schools, who then graduated from high 
school and from American colleges and 

universities in soaring numbers while 
building an array of lasting Jewish insti-
tutions and organizations, including 
United Synagogue and Jewish summer 
camps that instilled a variety of reli-
gious and Jewish cultural values and 
a strong sense of Jewish identity and 
commitment. 
Muslim-Americans, still somewhere 
between the first and second generation 
of immigration, are much closer to the 
beginning of this process. The un-ac-
culturated appearance of many Muslim-
Americans at the beginning of the 21st 
century recalls that of early 20th-centu-
ry Jewish immigrants — a large enclave 
of non-Christians speaking a different 
language (written in a different alpha-
bet), sporting different apparel, eating 
unfamiliar food. 
Muslims and Jews have also evinced 
a similar pride in the way that their 
cultures impacted American culture, 

especially evident in American music. 
Jews celebrate the fact that one of the 
motifs in God Bless America was import-
ed from the Shabbat morning liturgy 
and that a well-known tune in Porgy 
and Bess was a variation of the Barechu. 
Muslims hear the call of the mosque in 
the music of John Coltrane. Both reflect 
a common element of American culture 
and society: a nation of immigrants is 
more than a useful soundbite, but an 
acknowledgement of a richly textured 
culture and society built on a series of 
waves of immigration from all over 
the world. The Jewish contribution to 
American culture produced, among 
other things, Broadway. The Muslim 
contribution will likely contribute 
something just as remarkable. ■

Professor Howard Lupovitch is associate professor 
of history and director of the Cohn-Haddow 
Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State 
University.

For all these blessings, we thank 
President Trump — the most pro-Israel 
president in American history.
As the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. 
Ron Dermer said: “It is true that in 
every generation they rise up against 
U.S. ... But it is a rare thing — a very 
rare thing — a president like President 
Trump and an administration like the 
Trump administration — it doesn’
t hap-
pen every generation. It may happen 
once in many, many generations.
”

— Ed Kohl

West Bloomfield

Don’
t Trivialize 
Measles
At first, I thought Ms. Burstyn’
s essay, 
“Measles: Life Goes On” (April 11, page 
5) was just stupid and trivial. But as the 

week (and the measles epidemic) pro-
gressed, it started to bother me more 
and more that an individual would make 
light of a dangerous situation, and that 
the Jewish News would print the item. 
Who in their right mind says that “too 
much information is stressful?” 
There have been several articles in the 
Forward about the extreme Orthodox 
rabbis who are promulgating anti-
vax falsehoods and nonsense to their 
unquestioning followers. When I was 
growing up, we saw Drs. Sabin and Salk 
as heroic members of the tribe because 
their discoveries saved so many lives. 
What has happened in the intervening 
years?

— Cynthia Brody

Beverly Hills 
 

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