Gallup Independent, 8/1/20, New Mexico Jewish Link Fall, 2020
First Place, Columns/Personal, Society Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies, for Gallup Independent.
First Place, Religion, NM Press Women, for New Mexico Jewish Link, .

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar, occurred this year on Thursday, July 30, 2020. It is the day that traditionally commemorates the saddest tragedies of the Jewish people throughout history, beginning with the destruction of the First and Second Temples. This year, this same day also was the funeral of the great civil rights leader, John Lewis, who devoted his life to voting rights.  There was a meaningful correlation that reverberated between these two events. 

     Jewish people vote, religiously. It was estimated in 2008 that 96% of all people who self-identified as Jews voted in the presidential election. This impetus to vote may be traced to the destruction of the First Temple, the Temple of Solomon, in 586 BC by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon. When he exiled the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah to Babylon, Jews would learn to acclimate themselves as a people without a land.

John Lewis, when he knew he was dying, earlier in July penned an essay to be read aloud at his funeral. Listening to it, you can feel his deep religious convictions about voting. He wrote, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself. 

“Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.”

Lewis saw the storm coming. Earlier that same morning, July 30, before Lewis was buried, the U.S. president, having not been invited to the funeral, tweeted “…Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

In a Washington Post perspectives column published later that day, “Trump’s ‘Delay the Election’ checks all 8 rules for fascist propaganda,” Yale University professor of history Timothy Snyder wrote “With this tweet, the president both revives fascist propaganda and exploits a new age of Internet post- truth: He follows a trail blazed by fascists, but adds a twist that is his own. A fascist guide to commentary on elections would have eight parts: contradict yourself to test the faith of your followers; tell a big lie to draw attention from basic realities; manufacture a crisis; designate enemies; make an appeal to pride and humiliation; express hostility to voting; cast doubt on democratic procedures; and aim for personal power.

“…This is where the differences with historical fascists begin. Fascists believed in responsibility: a terrible responsibility, as they understood it — the need to destroy an old decadent world in the name of a new racial paradise, to drown democracy in blood, to fight wars for territory abroad, to set the world on fire. Trump has no such visions and no sense of responsibility, terrible or otherwise. He simply prefers to stay in power and have a comfortable life. He expresses just enough fascism to make this possible.”

In their regular column, “Ask The Rabbi,” the independent Jewish magazine Moment asked rabbis in the May-June, 2016 issue, “Are We Commanded to Vote?” Rabbis from nine different flavors of Judaism responded: Independent, Humanist, Renewal, Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox and Chabad.  All agreed that while we are not ‘commanded’ to vote, we are obligated to (God did not “command” us to vote because back in Biblical days we lived in monarchies, not democracies).  In short, voting is definitely a thing, among Jews.

Each person counts, and by voting, you affirm that value. Chabad Rabbi Dov Wagner responded, “We each count. Every one. And each person counts for no more—and no less—than one. Although that may be arguable at times in the vagaries of our political structures, it never varies where it truly matters—in our absolute and essential value in the eyes of G-d.”

Judaism teaches tikkun olam, that we are here to repair the world, to be involved in the social welfare of society. Modern Orthodox Rabbi Yitzhak Greenberg of Riverdale, NY, wrote, “The prophet Jeremiah does say that the Israelites should join in the country where they live, should build it, seek its welfare and pray for it. Voting is a key way to assure the well-being of the country. I believe that democracy is the political system most likely to advance the Torah’s goal of tikkun olam—to repair the world—so that every human being is treated as an equal, valuable and unique image of God.”

Independent Rabbi Gershon Winkler, of the Walkingstick Foundation, underscored how this passage from Jeremiah was related to Tisha B’Av,  “It was long ago suggested that we do what we can to contribute to the general welfare of the lands in which we sojourn. One could argue that voting may be a part of this contribution. The suggestion came to the prophet Jeremiah in a message from God, which he forwarded to our exiled ancestors following the destruction by the Babylonians of the First Jewish Commonwealth more than 2,400 years ago:
‘To all [those] I have exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat of their yield. Start families, have children, and help your children start families, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace of the village to which I have exiled you, and pray to God on her behalf, for in her state of peace shall you too find peace” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).’

     In 2018,  Reform Rabbi Josh Levy wrote, in an essay for the reform community of Great Britain, “Reform Judaism in 1000 Words: Tisha B’Av” (https://www.reformjudaism.org.uk/reform-judaism-in-1000-words-tisha-bav/, 7/19/2018), about how Tisha B’Av allowed a freedom that gave agency to each individual. “The model of Judaism lost in the destruction of the Temples was one in which God is the preserve of one location – the Temple in Jerusalem; one caste – the hereditary priesthood… As a result of the loss of the Temple, Judaism evolved to a form in which all can be in relationship with God irrespective of where we are or who we are … through prayer and through the way in which we live our lives.”

Navajo humanist Frank Morgan has expressed a deep sentiment in Navajo thought in his teachings, “They say that Shiprock was a great flying monster and it was later killed by the older Warrior Twin, Monster-slayer. Eagles evolved from transformation of the monster. We say that there is always transformation from destruction.”
#

by Ron Duncan Hart, 2020, Institute for Tolerance Studies. 

Review by Diane Joy Schmidt, New Mexico Jewish Link, Vol. 50, 2020 Honorable Mention, History, New Mexico Press Women Awards

At a time when Arab and Jewish relations have reached a fever pitch, “Jews and the Arab World”  traces the many centuries during which Jews and Arabs have lived together peacefully in the Middle East, and illuminates how the current period of nationalistic strife, beginning in the 20th century, is an anomaly. This meticulous, scholarly work provides an excellent introduction to this history, and gives us reason to hope for peace in the future by reminding us of this very recent past. 

Hart explains, “For 1,400 years Jews and Arabs have lived side by side and mostly with mutual respect. The oldest center of Jewish life outside of Israel was Baghdad. The greatest Jewish scholars lived there and prepared the “Babylonian” Talmud. In Western Europe,

a major center of Jewish life was the 800 years under Muslim rule in Spain. When the Muslims were driven out of Spain in 1492, Jews were expelled from that country three months later, mostly joining the Muslim retreat into North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish/Arab conflict that started in the twentieth century is an anomaly, and this book analyzes the issues that transformed that long history of co-existence into the conflict of today, including the four stages of the current conflict and the new developments that have occurred in recent years.” 

The story begins with Abraham, born in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq, and his two sons Ishmael and Isaac, and traces the common linguistic and cultural roots of Jews and Arabs. Muslims follow the line of the first born son, Ishmael, as the father of the Arabs, whose mother Haggar was Egyptian. “In contrast, Jews follow Isaac, the second born son, who was born of tribal purity, as the father of the Jews.” The Quran affirms that Islam is the religion of the God of Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob, that Abraham and Ishmael founded Islam, and together laid the black stone as the cornerstone of the Ka’aba at the center of Mecca. As People of the Book, Jews were accepted in Muslim society, in a minority status.

Across fourteen centuries, Hart introduces many historic figures that spark further interest. There is the warrior queen and seer Damia al-Kahina, “the Jewish Queen of the Amazigh.” Born into a Berber tribe that had become Jewish, she led a decades-long united tribal resistance to Arab advances during the 7th century.  Today, she is a legendary national heroine of Algerian independence; others revere her as a feminist and sorceress whose knowledge of tribal ways gave her the ability to foresee army advances through communication with birds.

There is the Spanish Jewish traveler and chronicler, Benjamin de Tudela, who witnessed the high status of the Jews of Baghdad in 1168 and described how the chief Rabbi, mounted on a horse with heralds proclaiming the way, made weekly visits to the Caliph, where he was placed on a throne. 

In Persia, Saadia Gaon translated the Torah into Arabic, “postulated the rational basis of Jewish thought and argued that Jews should accept the rational teachings of Aristotle and Plato in addition to the Torah,” and “prepared the basis for the later work of Maimonides. Saadia made it legitimate to be Jewish and Arab at the same time.”

In Muslim Spain, “Cordoba became the most important center of Talmudic studies in Europe. Poetry was a valued art form in the Muslim world, and the Jewish poets of Cordoba excelled.” Some of the greatest Jewish scholars come from this period: ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, Abraham ben Ezra, and Maimonides.

Following the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, Hart introduces the larger-than-life 

Doña Gracia Nasi, who helped thousands of Jews settle in the Ottoman Empire. 

Many also went to Morocco, where during World War II, the king refused to allow the Nazis to put the Jews of Morocco into camps. While the Jewish population is small today, the Jewish dialects of “Haketía and Judeo-Arabic are still spoken among many, and the traditional Jewish ballads are sung…” The Mimouna Association was created in 2007 by young Muslim students willing to promote and preserve the Jewish-Moroccan heritage. 

Finally, Hart relates the rather dreary events of the last one hundred years, and how anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic views have hardened among Arab states, especially among the young people who, unlike their grandparents, never experienced living together with Jews. 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries after 1948.  He writes how a young population, with no prospects for jobs, creates tremendous unrest. Hope may ultimately come in the form of greater opportunities for women. “As women’s educational levels increase, fertility rates tend to decrease and the woman’s opportunity to participate in the economy increases,” writes Hart.

Ron Duncan Hart, Ph.D. is a cultural anthropologist, Director of the Institute for Tolerance Studies in Santa Fe, and is also President of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. 

In an unusual confluence, Hart, his wife, and his daughter’s interests have influenced and enlivened one another’s. Columbian-born Gloria Abella Ballen is an international award-winning artist, and author of  “The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet.” Of their daughter, Vanessa Paloma Elbaz, Ph.D., who has achieved international renown and is now on the University of Cambridge music faculty, Hart writes that her “research in Morocco on gender and music in Jewish life has opened new areas of understanding” for him.

The Jewish calendar is filled with commemorations, but now the coronavirus has disrupted many of our ritual celebrations. Expectations have been dashed, but unexpected new experiences have followed. And sometimes, things work out differently, and the story now has a different, even happier ending. We have all adapted. Families have shared graduations, weddings, funerals, holiday meals and religious services via cell phones and computer screens. In the disruption, people have found themselves together in new ways. It’s made room for new ways of relating, and we are even more grateful for the connections we have. With new experiences, we are changing.

The choices I am making these days show me I’ve changed. A recent incident on an airplane mirrored an experience I had almost four decades years earlier, an experience that had burned itself into my mind, and left a deep scar on its folds. The recent incident, which might have passed by without notice, showed me that my life is changing in remarkable ways. If we pay attention to and think over the details of our lives now, we may see that our lives are changing in good ways.

In 1981 I was on my way to El Salvador to cover the war and change the world. When the plane stopped in Guatemala, a tall dark man with a heavy black mustache boarded carrying a colorful red, orange and yellow woven plastic bag. He spotted the empty seat next to me, unloaded his bundle in an overhead bin farther back, and came and sat down heavily and grinned at me from under his mustache. He was returning from Washington, D.C. with his boss, who turned out to be a most powerful man. 

The encounter would send my life into a darkening spiral that would take decades to climb out of. Descending into the bowels of the capital city that night, the smell of the cooking fires filled the air like Purgatory.

 This last year, wildfires in the California hills had shut down Highway 101 briefly, but friends assured me that everything was under control now, and I should come on my planned trip. My sister, terrified of fires, begged me not to go. “You’re always going into dangerous places,” she said. I caught a flight out of Albuquerque, with prayers for my safety trailing behind me.
After we took our seats on the plane, at the last minute a cheerful group of young people carrying colorful woven bundles and knapsacks trooped onboard. One girl spotted the empty seat next to me, stashed her woven plastic bundle in an overhead bin further back, and then came and plopped down. She grinned at me from under an orange fur hat that framed purple hair and which color also complimented a purple-fringed cowboy jacket. 

As we took off she she pulled out a book by the naturalist Terry Tempest Williams. She told me her name was Sage, she was studying to become an herbalist, she was part Navajo, and her mother was Jewish. She said her Jewish grandmother encouraged her career as an herbalist. 

I told her, “I’m Jewish and my husband is Navajo.” I thought this was true serendipity.
Sage was either nonplussed or unimpressed. I said, as a further overture, that if she came to Albuquerque again, my husband might introduce her to some traditional herbalists. She seemed light-filled, free-spirited and confident. 

I asked, “What’s your style called?” 

Sage said, “It’s whatever makes me feel like myself.”
At baggage claim, her friend took a snapshot of us for me. Later, I studied it. I was surprised to see that her T-shirt had a picture of a Celtic endless knot just like the metal ironwork I’d been transfixed by in O’Niell’s bar the previous week. That Celtic knot had sent me into a reverie—all things connected and came full circle in one’s life with no real exit—but then, behind the Celtic ironwork in the bar was a door with an exit sign over it. So there was an opening, like the thinking of a Navajo weaver to include a line traveling to the edge of the rug so the pattern is open.

      In the photo with Sage in the airport terminal photo, there was a sign behind and directly over us on the back wall, “Baggage.” I also saw the woven red, orange and yellow plastic bundle. Now it jarred loose the memory of that plastic bag I’d seen the man carrying when he boarded the plane in Guatemala when I was 27,  another kind of baggage that I’d carried,  attached to memories imprisoned in my mind.      
That imprinted moment had, like a filmstrip unrolling, now been recast with Sage the lovely herbalist instead of the sinister Salvadoran. A new story, now on the light, bright side.      

After I arrived in California, the uncontrollable wildfires began to close in. I didn’t stay. I was glad to have met Sage, and to have seen a completely different time and place with the smell of burning and death in the air. But this time I chose to leave, before the fires flared again. 

#

Gallup Independent, May 30, 2020

New Mexico Jewish Link, Vol. 50, 2020

February, 2020 Film Review: New Mexico Jewish Link
First Place, Reviews, New Mexico Press Women Awards 2021

In 2020, Jojo Rabbit, an anti-hate satire, was up for 6 academy awards in February, including Best Picture, and it won for Best Adapted Story. The film script is inspired by a novel, Christine Leunens’ Caging Skies, that in turn was based on a true story. That it won for Best Adapted Story is surprising, even ironic, as the way the movie ends is uplifting, whereas the novel becomes progressively darker. This begs the question: What serves us better, an inspiring story or one that hews closer to historic truth? 

Jojo Rabbit is written and directed byTaika Waititi, who grew up in New Zealand with his mother, who told him about the book. Waititi’s father is Maori and his mother is of Russian Jewish and Irish descent. Perhaps this mixture gave him a more creatively flexible way of thinking.

What I hope is that Jewish people will go to see this film and bring their non-Jewish friends to see it. It is funny, it is poignant, and it delivers an important teaching. Those who despised Mel Brooks’ The Producers and who, understandably, cannot watch a film that satirizes Hitler, will probably not appreciate it. Nevertheless, it has sufficient merit that the Shoah Foundation approved it for their educational programs. 

Claudia Ramirez Weideman, the foundation’s associate director of education technologies, explained to reporter PJ Grisar in the Feb. 26, 2020 Forward that, when they saw an early screening, “Everyone, I think, could see the enormous potential that the film could bring to promoting understanding around anti-Semitism, humanizing of ‘The Other,’ promoting empathy. . .”

The story begins by introducing Jojo, a 10-year-old German boy, with a friend who as the written script’s direction describes: “is none other than Jojo’s Imaginary Friend, Adolf Hitler. However, it’s not the Hitler we’re all used to, he’s imaginary and therefore can only know what Jojo knows.” Jojo is looking forward to spending the weekend with the Hitler Youth, where he is indoctrinated into hating Jewish people. This role, played by Waititi himself, did not exist in the original novel. It works throughout the film to show us the thrall that Hitler had over young people, and changes that Jojo’s character finally undergoes.

       At the camp they chant “Horns / Serpent tongue / Fangs /Green blood / Claws, while their teacher proudly writes the children’s words on a blackboard. At the top of the board is the heading: “The Jew.” Later Jojo sits in his tent with his friend Yorki and fantasizes about catching a Jew. 

Yorki, who is a bit less sanguine about the whole business, asks him, “But how would you know if you saw one?”

Jojo says, “Oh I’d know. I’d feel its head for horns. And they smell like Brussels Sprouts.

Yorki replies, deadpanning, “Oh yeah, I forgot about the Brussels Sprouts bit.”

Jojo, undeterred, says, “Imagine catching one and giving it to Hitler. That’d be a sure-fire way to get into his personal guard.”

Elsa is the heroine of the film 

But Jojo gets seriously injured with a permanent scar to his face, and has to come home, only to discover that his mother Rosie, is hiding a Jewish teenager, Elsa, in their attic. Rosie is played with scintillating wit by Scarlett Johansson, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role. When Jojo stumbles across Elsa, instead of cowering, Elsa grabs Jojo by the neck and demands he tell her who she is, saying, “Yes. You know.” 

Jojo gulps and futilely replies, “A Jew.” 

“Gesundheit,” Elsa jokes, like he’d said ‘achoo.’

Elsa, played by the 19-year-old actress Thomasin McKenzie, is the pivotal star of the film in this viewer’s mind. Her courage and humor are transcendent, redeeming the film and providing a role model for those of us who have recently felt cowed by resurgence of anti-Semitism. 

After his encounters with Elsa, Jojo runs back to his room where his ridiculous imaginary friend Adolf says “She’s pretty rude, y’know. That’s just my two pfennige.”

Jojo gets the idea to have Elsa draw him a book about Jews. He says, “So, I’d like you to draw a picture of where Jews live. A typical hive; where you all sleep, eat, and where the Queen Jew lays the eggs.”

Elsa replies, “You really are an idiot.”

Later Jojo’s mother Rosie goes up to the attic and says to Elsa, “How do you love a son like this, a kid who believes the things he does? In the end, you have no choice. I know he’s still in there somewhere, the little boy who loves to play and runs to you because he’s scared of thunder.”

Jojo visits Elsa again, and again she overpowers him, and says, “There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can’t even grow a full mustache.”

Jojo knows if he tells on Elsa, he would get her, his mother and himself killed as well. But what fun is it to have a secret if you can’t tell, a little? He goes and tells his Hitler Youth leader, Klenzendorf, who is now in the town, “I’m writing a book.” 

Klenzendorf asks, “What’s it called?” 

Jojo says, “‘Yoohoo Jew,’ It’s an exposé on Jews.” 

Klenzendorf thinks this is hilarious. He shows Jojo his secret fashion drawings of uniforms dressed up with sequins and tassels. In this is an important educational point, the hint that Klezendorf, played by Sam Rockwell, is not really a Nazi, because, for a true fascist, everyone must conform; the uniform, the thinking, the style must be ‘just so.’

Later upstairs Elsa tries to tell Jojo, “You’re not a Nazi, Jojo. You’re a 10 year old kid who ‘likes’ swastikas and ‘likes’ dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club. But you’re not one of them. Not you.”

            I took a non-Jewish friend to see the film. Afterwards she asked me if I was disturbed by the anti-Semitic caricatures that Jojo made. I explained that the point was to show how infantile and ridiculous they were. Ridiculous but also tragic in their consequences. Many young people today don’t know about the Holocaust, that six million Jewish people, throughout all the towns and cities and villages of Europe, were hunted down and murdered.

Evil has a certain appeal. It is hard to understand, that appeal. But this film delivers a significant body blow to that evil. Sometimes by showing up evil, making it ridiculous, without letting our guard down, we can see it for what it is. In this way perhaps we are not doomed. 

The ending (spoiler alert)

Unfortunately, even after Jojo becomes enamored of Elsa, it takes him almost to the end of the film to kick out his imaginary friend Adolf, to let go of his fanatical loyalty, when the Allies occupy the town. Elsa asks, Who won? Is it safe to go out? At first he says, no, the Germans, but then, tells her the truth and they go out. There the movie ends. 

It is at this point that the book, Caging Skies, is only half-way through and takes a significant turn, as Leigh Monson pointed out in ‘Jojo Rabbit’ is One of the Strangest Adaptations Ever – Here’s How It Differs From the Book. The boy, in the book Johannes, doesn’t let go. He lies, he tells Elsa that the Germans won and he keeps her inside for himself for four more years until finally they turn on each other in hatred. This shows us the true dangers of indoctrination – it is a story that does not have a Hollywood finish.

The film ends with a quote from the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, 

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final.”

#

1st Place, Columns/Personal, Society Professional Journalists Top of the Rockies, GI 2/22/20, and New Mexico Jewish Link Spring 2020 2nd Place, NMPW Reviews.

The movie Frozen II is now neck-and-neck with The Lion King for biggest-grossing animated film of all time and one song, Into The Unknown, was Academy-award nominated for Best Original Song.  It also happens to contain a really radical idea for what society needs to save itself and our future. 

The story is influenced by the mythology and music of the reindeer-herding Sámi people of northern Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. It was produced in consultation and cooperation with their representatives, and has been dubbed into the Sámi language in an agreement with Disney. The story resonates with a universal spiritual hunger felt in both the inner world of the individual psyche and in society. 

As the movie starts, Elsa is a queen ruling over the kingdom of Arendelle from a palace. Unlike Cinderella, where the entire goal is to end up living happily ever after in the castle on the hill, this is not Elsa’s idea of ultimate success—instead, she hears a voice calling her. Elsa’s journey is about self-discovery but it is also about something she must tackle that is bigger than herself. It is a journey that will require she leap into the unknown.

Elsa at first refuses the call, this siren voice calling her into the unknown, the Enchanted forest, which is hidden behind a mist. Elsa and her sister Anna were brought up to fear that the angry nature spirits of the shrouded Enchanted forest may rise up and do harm. But, as Elsa sings, she knows deep down, that’s where she’s meant to be.

As Elsa struggles with herself to deny this call, she asks to come into her own power, and her passionate singing actually awakens those angry elemental spirits, who descend on the kingdom and drive the people up onto a plateau. 

Elsa divulges to her sister Anna, “I woke the spirits at the Enchanted forest, because of the voice—I believe whoever calling me is good.” But now that the populace is all stuck on a plateau, what to do? Some direction is needed.

The Troll, a magical creature, shows up. He acts as a mentor, a diagnostician, and spells out the path that must be taken. As his vision unfolds he says gravely, “Let me see what I can see: Angry magical spirits are not for the faint of heart. The past is not what it seems, a wrong demands to be righted. Arendelle is not safe. The truth must be found. Without it, I see no future.” 

Anna says, “No future?”

The Troll continues, “When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing.”

Elsa replies, “The next right thing is for me to go to the Enchanted forest and find that voice.” Once in the forest Elsa learns that in addition to earth, air, fire and water, there is a fifth element, that bridges the spiritual and the physical worlds. She also learns there that water has memory. Eventually she finds the truth that sets things right so that Arendelle will have a future.

Psychologist Carl Jung wrote a book after World War II that addressed Hitler’s power, “The Undiscovered Self,” about the danger of repressing the shadow, the parts of ourselves that we don’t like, and how that leads a society to fascism and totalitarianism—that what we deny in ourselves, that what we keep hidden in the unconscious, behind a fog of unknowing, we project onto others, making them the object of fear. 

In Frozen II there is a dark secret, a denial, that is kept hidden behind a mist, a fog, the unconscious. But the thing to be feared was not the Enchanted forest or the nature spirits. The feared thing was the truth: that Elsa and Anna’s grandfather, the King, had deliberately weakened and attacked the forest people; the history of the criminal domination of indigenous peoples by feudal kings. 

Most historians tend to pain a linear picture of societal evolution as tribal cultures superseded by feudal societies and then technological ones. This movie turns that premise on its head, and tells us that our modern society will be doomed unless a hidden wrong is righted, is faced, that we have chosen to hide in an enchanted forest behind a mist. Denial of the genocidal tendencies of modern man cannot stand. A bridge of understanding must be built between the indigenous world and the technological one. This is a message for society at this critical time.

Frozen II presents the mythic journey of the heroine, that to come into one’s own power includes rejoining the lost mother. In order for Elsa to find her true self, and the dark secrets, she must first find her lost parents’ shipwreck and a message left by her mother that hints at where she must go. She learns that the source of her magic powers lies at the mythical mother river, Ahtohollen. Meanwhile her sister Anna follows the more traditional journey of the hero, where she must save the day after Elsa reaches Ahtohollen but becomes trapped.

Fundamentally, this film is telling us that our overly masculine, mechanistic society radically needs what it has rejected if we are to survive: the balance of the feminine, the spiritual, as represented by the sometimes ferocious, sometimes benevolent forces of nature. A must-see movie for today’s children and their parents. And the best part, the kids leave the theater singing. 

#

View as published in the December 2019 New Mexico Jewish Link with more photos. Also published, New Mexico Kids! Feb-March 2020. AJPA Rockower award, Reporting on Social Justice and Humanitarian Work, and single feature photo award, New Mexico Press Women, 2020.

There is a public school in Albuquerque that studies the Holocaust and sends its eighth graders on a two-week field trip to Poland. They visit a concentration camp and the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, built on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as other cultural sites and museums. This is the The Montessori Elementary & Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a free public charter school, where entrance is by lottery.

The school participates in an exchange program with a Montessori school in Poland, whose families host the American students, and who in turn sends a group of their students here to New Mexico in the fall. The voluntary trip to Poland costs each student $2,500, and they raise money throughout the year with craft and bake sales in order to go. About 25 students went this last year. 

Three eighth graders, Aiden, Alyssa and Jaycee, who are preparing to go to Poland this year, along with two alumni who already went, Sophia, now a high school freshman and Mikeala, a sophomore, met with the Link and talked about what they have been studying in preparation for their trip, and why. Administrator Stan Albrycht and math teacher Alissa Sanchez have led the trips for the last six years, and language arts teacher, Amanda Hagerty, who this year joined them, brought the students together to share what they have been learning. 

All of the students demonstrated an astonishing adult-level maturity of character. thought and openness during the discussion. They were very present, forthright and articulate. They made a positive impression on this visitor, an impression that lingered for days, and that revitalized her sense of hope for the future of humanity.

One student, Aiden, explained why the school is studying genocide: that one of the cornerstones of the school is peace-building, and that they have been learning about genocide “so that it never happens again.” In sixth and seventh grades they visit the Holocaust and Intolerance Museum. One display, the Six Stages of Genocide, made a particular impression on Aiden, that the first stage was simply, bias. 

Jaycee explained that they don’t only study the Holocaust. They have learned about genocides in Rwanda, Armenia, and here in New Mexico. They go on a field trip to the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, where she was impressed seeing the large-scale historic photographic panel display there devoted to the Long Walk. Beginning in 1864, thousands of Navajo people died when they were marched in winter over four hundred miles to Bosque Redondo, near Portales, NM, and imprisoned in starvation conditions for four years. The students also read a story in seventh grade, “The Last Snake Runner” about when the conquistadors decimated the Acoma people here. 

This year the students read The Sunflower. When the New Mexico Jewish Federation learned about the Montessori school’s program this last year, they allocated funds to pay the entry fee for the students to visit to Auschwitz, and purchased copies for the school of The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness, a true story by Simon Wiesenthal. They also read Milkweed, a novel about a boy’s experiences of the Warsaw Ghetto in WWII. However, they all said they got more out of The Sunflower. 

Aiden said, for one thing, because it had real characters with real dialogue, it hit closer than a novel could. The students had to think about what they would have done in Wiesenthal’s place. As a young man, he was  in the Lemberg concentration camp working in a labor detail at an army hospital, when a nurse brought him before an S.S. officer who was dying and who had asked to talk to a Jew—he wanted a Jew to forgive him. The officer was haunted by a crime he had participated in committing, when a building filled with 300 Jewish people was set on fire and as the people tried to escape they shot them. 

Wiesenthal left the officer to die without saying anything. He thought for many years about if he had done the right thing. 

Jaycee described how Wiesenthal also later visited the S.S. officer’s mother, but chose not to tell her what her son had done, he didn’t want to change her image of him. The mother had never seen how her son had changed, how had gone into the Hitler youth and become a Nazi. The students agreed with both of Wiesenthal’s choices. 

Alyssa said she wouldn’t have forgiven the guard, and she also wouldn’t have told his mother what he had done. One reason the students would not have forgiven the guard was because the S.S. officer did not seem to have changed—he asked for just any Jew to confess to, to come to forgive him, as if they were all the same community, not individuals. 

As Jaycee explained, this told the students he really didn’t understand what he had done, and was just seeking to be absolved of his guilt. She said, “I don’t think I could forgive him, he thought of Jews as one, not as individuals.” 

  The story is followed in the book by essays by a diverse group of more than 50 individuals of different faiths and background, some well-known, like the Dalai Lama, Deborah Lipstadt, and Primo Levi. They address the question of whether to forgive or not with varied responses and reasons. One exercise the students did after reading the book was to make sunflowers and write some of the key responses they read on each of the petals. Jaycee recounted how the Dalai Lama said, ‘Forgive but never forget.’

The school has something called a peace table. When they have a conflict with another student, they go to the table and work on conflict resolution. Jaycee explained that, you say, “I feel this,” rather than ‘you did so-and-so.” She said the studies about genocide have helped her in that work. 

Hagerty had learned about The Sunflower when she attended a summer five-day satellite course that the TOLI organization, The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, offers to teachers in Albuquerque and many other cities in the U.S. and Europe. “Teaching the Holocaust for Social Justice: The New Mexico Summer Satellite for Educators,” will be held next June 15-19, 2020 in Albuquerque. TOLI is also a beneficiary organization of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. More information is available at toli.us. 

Doing her own research, Hagerty also found a video online by Eva Kors, who together with her twin sister was subjected to the horrifying, evil experiments carried out at Auschwitz by Dr. Mengele that she barely survived. Kors chose in later life to forgive her torturers. She has spoken publicly about her decision, which remains controversial—many could not understand how she could do that, or that she should.

The students discussed how they could also understand her choice. Alyssa said that it wasn’t easy, that it took time over many years, that it required deep inner work of her own, so that she could be freer of the experience. She was impressed by what Kors said— it was a choice she herself could make, with meaning, whereas as a child victim she had no power over the meaningless acts done to her. “I felt it was really hard for her to forgive; and I would like to be able to be that way.” She felt it showed a lot of strength of character. 

The students agreed it would be much harder to forgive someone if they denied what they did.

Sophia, now a high school freshman, who visited the Stutthof concentration camp with her class this spring, said that “it changed the way I think about history.” Instead of just studying facts “that seemed to have happened ‘oh, so long ago,’ you could actually feel some of the sadness, so you really felt the impact of it all.” Sophia was also struck by what was left today, knowing all that had happened there before. She felt the school’s curriculum had prepared her for the trip, and she has continued to read more books about World War II on her own. 

     Mikeala, now a sophomore, said that still, nothing could prepare them for the reality of being at a concentration camp and the profound experience of seeing the place and the exhibits there. She remembered seeing Otto Frank’s suitcase, the father of Anne Frank. Today when she hears news she says, “Oh, this is happening. I think deeper, what is their life, how bad it really is, how much pain.” She said that it makes her ask, “How can we make things better.” Both high schools students feel they have a greater awareness and understanding of world history than others at their high school.

During the trip the students keep daily journals, and the day of the concentration camp visit, immediately after, they spend time with a theater drama group with a social work component, Group Próg, where together with the actors they sing and dance with songs and gypsy music. The therapeutic activity helps to integrate the shock to the emotions, explained Stan Albrycht, the Albuquerque Montessori’s school finance administrator. He and math teacher Alissa Sanchez, who has put a lot of work into the program, have organized and accompanied the group each year. Albrycht said that parents are not allowed on the trip, that their presence would interfere with the students’ experiential learning.  

In a statement of purpose about reading The Sunflower, Hagerty, who went with the group for the first time this last year, had written that “…students will contemplate the events that happened throughout the Holocaust and their impacts on individuals and the world; discuss their thoughts about forgiveness and what it means to forgive those who have done something that many would say is unforgivable; do close reading of high level text that has content that is difficult to comprehend. . . and participate in multiple Socratic discussions.” 

The students clearly demonstrated that they succeeded in fulfilling this, and more, they are seeing its relevance in current events.

*NM KIDS! Feb-March 2020, added:

Victor Raigoza, president of the board of directors of the Holocaust and Intolerance Museum, said: “The goal of the museum is to reach out to students using different methods to teach about the effects of hate and intolerance. This is a result of the sad trend of today’s students not being taught about the Holocaust. We would like to help achieve the goal of making the history of the Holocaust as part of our state’s mandatory curriculum.” A 2018 study that surveyed 1,350 Americans found that 22 percent of Millennials are unaware or unsure of what the Holocaust is. (http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Holocaust-Knowledge-Awareness-Study_Executive-Summary-2018.pdf)

Story and photos by Diane Joy Schmidt, New Mexico Jewish Link, Volume 49, Number 2, Fall 2019/Stav 5780. See as published at this googledrive LINK.
Below is a slightly revised, enlarged draft that was submitted, in particular here is one paragraph that did not make it in time for the published story, that I felt especially chilling, in response to the fourth question, “Is a Two-State Solution still possible?:

**Tobin did argue that, on the other hand, things are turning in Israel’s favor—at least, among the leaders in the Sunni Arab states, who, he said, are tired of Palestinian intransigence. He said, “The leaders of the Sunni Arab states are far more afraid of Iran than of anything Israel might do. In fact they look to Israel as a bulwark, as someone who might defend them against Iran. The subtext there is, they are not that keen on creating another Arab state that might be dominated by Islamic extremists, which would be a threat to them as well as to the Jews.”  The story begins below:

THE DEBATE “LEFT VS. RIGHT: THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICAN JEWRY”

It is a measure of the heartfelt desire within the American Jewish community that people wish to get along, that they want to show their genuine willingness to understand and to come to grips with the issues that divide us. It is this fundamental need for Jews to find common cause with one another that has kept a project going that was launched back in 2017, “Left vs. Right, The Battle for the Soul of American Jewry.” The title was, until recently, “The Battle for Israel’s Soul,” indicating the polarization that has only increased since Trump took office here. 

Two eminent journalists set out across the country with sufficient missionary zeal to tilt at windmills for our viewing pleasure, J.J. Goldberg, editor-at-large and former editor-in-chief of The Forward, for the left, and Jonathan Tobin, contributing writer for The National Review and editor-in-chief of JNS.org, the Jewish News Syndicate, for the right.

        It was a full house at Temple Beth Shalom on Sunday, August 26th when the show came to Santa Fe, and Rabbi Neil Amswych introduced Goldberg, Tobin and the moderator, board member Steven Farber, a distinguished Santa Fe attorney and civic leader. A series of questions around four main topics were posed with timed responses and counter-responses. For almost two hours, the audience sat listening attentively, while also intently scribbling on notecards the questions they wished to have aired at the Q&A at the end. 

This is the 61st time Goldberg and Tobin have presented their friendly debate-like conversation, and while they wildly disagreed on many issues, the tone was mild and civil throughout. No blood-pressure cuffs were raised. In the evening, they also traveled to Hillel House at the University of New Mexico and performed for another two hours for a young crowd.

The main point they stressed was that we can, we must, listen to each other. At this time, it is too easy to tune out the other channels, to un-friend those you don’t agree with on Facebook, to not try to listen and understand one another’s point of view.

The First Question

Farber chose to lead off with the most recent question, “Was Israel right or wrong to forbid the political visit planned by the two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib?” This was asked along with, “Do BDS and anti-Zionism amount to anti-Semitism in new clothes?” ( the acronym BDS stands for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, a Palestinian-led movement to boycott Israel).

Tobin said that they both agreed it was a mistake for Israel to bar the two congresswomen; to him it was a mistake because it gave them enormous prestige, and the media focus on them completely overshadowed any news whatsoever of the visit by the large delegation of 41 Democrats and 31 Republicans who visited Israel earlier that week and who held a joint press conference showing their support for Israel.

Goldberg said the media have made misrepresentations of statements by Omar and Tlaib, making them sound anti-Semitic by not giving the full context of their statements. He also said that Omar has repeatedly said that BDS is not helpful because it shuts down dialogue, and that she has said we need dialogue to get to peace and a two-state solution.

Tobin responded that nobody is complaining that the congresswomen are criticizing Israel, “both of us criticize Israel, 7 million Jews get up every morning in Israel and criticize Israel,” but that they are opposed to Israel.  He said the debate has moved to, “Should there be an Israel?” and that Tlaib is opposed to a Jewish state under any circumstances. He also pointed out that Trump is more than happy to paint them as the new face of the Democratic party, and said that, as a conservative from the outside looking in, that this is an issue for Democrats need to concern themselves with. 

Tobin went on to say that it has become dangerously fashionable on college campuses to be anti-Israel, to embrace anti-Zionist attitudes, to embrace intersectionality, the idea that Israel is the villain in the Middle East, and that is to embrace anti-Semitism. He said the real threat of BDS is not to Israel, which is economically strong, but to American Jewish kids on college campuses.

Goldberg said that as much as we are afraid of what sounds to us like anti-Semitism, a lot of it is not anti-Semitism. 

The Second Question, Confronting anti-Semitism in the U.S.

The discussion moved on to anti-Semitism in the U.S., and included the questions “Is it possible for Jews to find common ground with each other to confront anti-Semitism as a community? Which represents a greater threat to Jewish security, the white supremacist right or the far left?”

J.J. Goldberg said that while in Europe Muslims are the greater danger, in the U.S. the far-right way outpaces Muslims in killing Jews. He explained that “The threat in this country is mainly from the radical right. A school of the radical right is growing, that says that white people are facing white genocide, because of the rise of non-white peoples who are taking over and eliminating the white European culture that we stand for — at the behest of Jews, so they can destroy white culture and take over the world.” He said that this conspiracy theory is what killed 11 Jewish people in Pittsburgh, 51 Muslims in New Zealand, 22 Mexican-Americans in El Paso, and the mass murderer in Norway who killed 77 there because they were encouraging immigration.

  Tobin reflected that “Politics has replaced religion for many Americans as their true faith. People are more upset about their children marrying someone from a different political party than a different faith.” Then Tobin briefly tried to make a case that the far left has more political influence in this country than the far right. 

Both agreed that anti-Semitism should not be a partisan issue, that it should be opposed from both the right and the left. 

The Third Question, around Immigration.

The third set of questions, around immigration, started with, “Does the Jewish community have a stake in the debate about U.S. immigration policy?” 

Tobin asked whether “the entire populations of these countries (Central America) should be allowed to come here just because there’s violence and economic distress in their countries?” And, that it cannot be equated with the Jews fleeing the Holocaust. 

Goldberg agreed that analogies to the Holocaust are too extreme and that calling border detention camps ‘concentration camps’ is too extreme. But, he pointed out, “this whole debate began when we started seeing the separation of families, the caging of children. Trump has his cheering squads out in the hinterlands cheering, yay.” He said this shows the influence of the far right with this administration. In a response to Tobin arguing that we must follow the rule of law, that there are immigration laws, Goldberg reminded us of how the history of immigration laws led to many of the deaths in the Holocaust, and that refugee laws were adopted after WWII to protect those who are facing the threat of death. 

He asked, “Should these immigrants be doomed to die, when at best it takes several years to get your hearing? Jewish people have not only historical memories, but we have values.” Goldberg went on to say that it’s only a very small, noisy group that says ‘throw the borders open.’  “There’s a middle ground but we get hysterical listening to the other side.” He pointed out how we need more immigration courts, and that cutting off aid to Central American countries is completely counter-productive.

The Fourth Question: Is a Two-State Solution still possible?

To  “Is the idea of a 2-state solution still possible?” Goldberg said, “The bottoms line is, as long as there is no other solution that is plausible, the 2-state solution is the only answer.  The only question is, how long is it going to take to get there.” 

He identified opponents to a 2-state solution as consisting of two groups, those that don’t trust the Arabs, and religious Zionists, who believe that if we give up the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, (that comprise the West Bank), that God will punish us. “To save us from the Arab hordes or from God’s wrath, you need to plant settlements throughout the West Bank so it becomes impossible to give it up.” 

Tobin first seemed to acknowledge Goldberg’s points, saying a two-state solution is, in theory, the most rational solution. However, he insisted that in Israel, from the center-left to the right, the consensus now is that it is not possible. “The overwhelming majority, not just Likudniks, not just people in the settlements, think that repeating Sharon’s experiment of Gaza with the far larger, far more strategic West Bank wouldn’t be merely ill-advised, it would be insane. . . However unpleasant the status quo might be, it is better than the alternative . . . The best thing is to wait for a sea-change in Palestinian politics.”

Goldberg responded that the time is now, that the Palestinians are becoming more rigid, not less. He said that Israel is safer with a peace agreement than with more land, and that there is a peace offer on the table agreed on by the Arab League, with 1967 borders with land swaps, a symbolic number of refugees allowed to return to Israel, and the rest resettled. Otherwise, he said, without two states, Israel will not give 4 million people on the West Bank the vote, and Ehud Barak, former prime minister, has warned over and over again that this is going to turn Israel into an apartheid state. A two-state peace agreement would mean moving 150,000 Jewish settlers, but it could be done.

“All the retired heads of the Shin Bet, the security police, all of the former heads of Mossad, the intelligence arm, all but one of of the retired security establishment and intelligence in Israel agree that Israel should be agreeing now to a two-state solution. They say, begin negotiations now, because they’re willing to negotiate,” said Goldberg.

Referencing the upcoming elections in two weeks in Israel that will determine if Netanyahu continues in office, Goldberg added, “And, the only reason Israel is not agreeing now is because Netanyahu’s government would fall because it rests on a minority who believes God will punish us if we leave.” Netanyahu, he added, also has grave doubts because he doesn’t trust Arabs as far as he can throw them. But, Goldberg insists that according to polls, 60% of Israelis and of Palestinians would go for a two-state solution when terms of the Arab Peace Initiative plan are presented.

Tobin scoffed at Goldberg’s views and, in summary, said that there is no deal that Palestinians would accept from the Arab League or from Trump or from Saudi Arabia or from anyone else; that their culture is still rooted in this one-hundred year old war against Zionism. He said, consider that the Palestinian Authority will still give pensions to terrorists even if it means giving up Western aid. 

**Tobin did argue that, on the other hand, things are turning in Israel’s favor—at least, among the leaders in the Sunni Arab states, who, he said, are tired of Palestinian intransigence. He said, “The leaders of the Sunni Arab states are far more afraid of Iran than of anything Israel might do. In fact they look to Israel as a bulwark, as someone who might defend them against Iran. The subtext there is, they are not that keen on creating another Arab state that might be dominated by Islamic extremists, which would be a threat to them as well as to the Jews.” 

We may soon see what the future holds if no two-state agreement is to be seriously addressed. The Israeli elections will take place September 17th, and the hopes and fears for the future of the State of Israel are reaching a fevered pitch.  

Don’t shut people down: Listen, learn, respond.

At the Q&A, one question from the audience was, ‘What the best way is to respond to the Lannon Foundation’s series of lectures in Santa Fe that has an anti-Israel bias?’  

Tobin responded for both him and Goldberg that,“The best way to respond to any speech that is wrong is with speech that is good. The answer is not to try to shut them down, (but to) respond with speech of your own, political activism of your own. That’s the only answer. 

“The left and the right in this country seem to be only in the business of telling each other to shut up. We no longer wish to listen, we’ve forgotten how to listen, and that’s the real problem in America today. The breakdown of community, social media, all these issues. Don’t try to shut people up. Listen, learn, respond.” 

###

Geometry Literary Journal, Vol. 5, Autumn/Winter 2019

Story and photos by Diane Joy Schmidt
VIEW as published HERE on Googledrive or below

www.Geoliterary.com
The piece as published received First place, Writing/Photography story, New Mexico Press Women Communications Contest, 2020. The story was first accepted by the magazine then the photos I had taken were added. The piece was republished by the NM Jewish Link, Summer 2020.

Chicago through the eyes of an all-night taxi driver. Story and photo essay by Diane Schmidt, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, January 22, 1984. View easily readable .pdf HERE (at googledrive). Awarded National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship in Photography, 1986, for these photos plus photo essay on all-night coffeeshops.

The New Mexico Jewish Link won an award in the 38th Annual Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. Correspondent Diane Joy Schmidt won the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding Award for Excellence in Interfaith Relations Reporting, 2nd Place for her article titled “The Pittsburgh Shooting, Our Community Unites in Response” Winter 2018. Click here to read the original article.
The American Jewish Press Association presented the awards during the banquet held at its annual conference June 23-26th, 2019, which this year was held in St. Louis. The awards are for work published in 2018.

Also, the other front page story “Journey of a Torah Scroll Weaves History and Geography” won first place in Religion articles at the New Mexico Press Women Communication Awards. Click here
to read.