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This week Arizona Congressional Representative Gabrielle Gifford is stepping down. Gifford was shot in the head nearly a year ago outside a grocery store while talking with constituents. Six others present were killed and many others wounded.
Here is her moving resignation video:
“If someone would tell me here, then, that I wout come sixty something and three years later with my grandchildren, so I’d say what are you talking about?… so here you are. This is a really historic moment”. – Adolek Kohn, survivor, Auschwitz.
The video to the left features three generations of a Melbourne family – a holocaust survivor, his daughter, and his grandchildren dancing on the grounds of concentration camps across Europe and in front of synagogues and signs of Jewish life across Europe. Full of joy and determination they are accompanied by Gloria Gaynor’s song “I will Survive”. In the final moments Gaynor’s song merges with Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love”. It was produced by his daughter, Australian artist Jane Korman.
The video is the first in a three part series: the second shows her dancing as a child with her father and other family members to the tune of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love”. The final video interviews Adolek Kohn playing his memories of the train ride to Auschwitz begging for water against his joyous return so many years later with grandchildren, a trip few ever had a chance to make:
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in …
Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love (Leonard Cohen, 1984)
Kohn’s daughter who produced the video, explains that she had noticed that people had become numb to the word “Holocaust”. She wanted a fresh way to get people thinking about the Holocaust. Later when the video created controversy, she asked her parents how they felt about the negative reactions. He said “We came from the ashes – now we dance.”. “I came with my grandchildren… I don’t know how many people can come with their grandchildren because most of them are dead.”
The video series first published in the summer of 2010, created some controversy and a wide range of responses. For some it shifted their understanding. For others it was a sign of hope. For others a sign of disrespect.
thats seriously amazing. Its so empowering. That survivor went back to where he watched hundreds of thousands of people died and danced with his grandchildren, I think its just an amazing example of the power of the human spirit ( bhawk911 on Youtube )
I think the main thing that this video challenged in my ideas was the notion that Auschwitz is a grave site. It isn’t. It’s a crime scene. Those are two very different things. ( iwoj on You Tube )
I think this display at the site of extreme horror for many Jews is mistaken and a desecration. It is wonderful that Mr. Kohn survived, but there are many others that seek to destroy the Jews and it is a mockery of those who succumbed. (Facts Life on DebbieSchlussel.com )
Some fellow Holocaust survivors were also offended. “It seems to trivialize the horrors that were committed,” said Kamil Cwiok, 86. “I don’t see how this video is a mark of respect for the millions who didn’t survive or for those who did.”
The range of responses should not be surprising. There is no such thing as a simple response to the kind of evil presented by the Holocaust. The potential for evil must not be forgotten. The dead deserve to be honored. The living deserve to rejoice and underscore the failure of those who tried to harm them, most especially by transforming the very sites where the horror took place.
Judaism has often struggled with the conflicting dynamic beween acknowledging evil and refusing to let it have the final word. In Jewish tradition the trecherous Amalek and Haman are supposed to have their names blotted out forever. Yet each year Jews remember them by remembering their oblivion. How? By turning it into a celebration. On Purim, children and adults dress up in clothes that deliberately mock the normal roles and conventions of life. In synagogue, every time the name of Haman is mentioned during the reading of the Purim story (book of Esther) it is drown out by loud noises – groggers, table pounding, cymbals and other loud noises – at once both remembering and forgetting.
There is also precedent in Jewish tradition for dancing at graves, as strange as the idea may seem. Each year at Rosh HaShanna, followers of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav gather in Uman to spend the holiday in the presence of this holy story teller and Hassidic leader. Rabbi Nachman taught that joy was a pathway to God, so his followers dance in his name through the streets and even at his grave.
To have died in the Holocaust is to become a holy person, a tzaddik. To dance near and at the graves of those who did not survive acknowledges that their martyrdom was not without cause, that their courage will never be forgotten. We live in the shadow of their holiness. We must not forget. At least some of those for whom the murdered died live on and continue to thrive in their name. Is there any better way to remember?
How would you wish to be remembered if your life had been stolen from you? If your loved ones’ had?
Change.org has put up a petition asking that the school waive the legal fees and set up a proper policy so that students don’t have to cheer the name of a student they allege has raped them. Please visit the site if you would like to sign it.
If you would like to donate to a fund to offset the legal fees, you can visit http://www.helpthecheerleader.com/ .
This week Gabrielle Union caused an uproar when she tweeted about Rihanna’s recent video Man Down.
Unfortunately in all of the uproar, Gabrielle Union rather than her message became the focus. Her message was this: we need to talk about rape and Rihanna’s video is getting the conversation going. She expressed understanding but not approval for the solution to rape portrayed in Rihanna’s video, “Man Down”. (more…)
At a certain point in their healing process, many survivors begin wondering if they can use their experiences to make a difference in other people’s lives. Coming to terms with a front row seat witnessing the worst humanity offers is no simple matter. It takes a lot of creativity and effort so many wonder if they can find additional uses for the work they have put into healing.
Whether one is a survivor or simply has a passionate vision for change, the first step in turning that vision into reality is to define a set of concrete goals and support them with an action plan.
The following “10 commandments” of goal setting are based on a list provided by Jamie Mintun. Management and motivational literature often like to speak rhetorically so lists of 3, 7 or 10 so this is only one of many such lists. However, Mintun’s list gets high marks for its blend of both emotional and practical aspects of goal setting. (more…)
One Monday, my husband and I went to Tel Aviv. He had a meeting and I had things to read so I decided to travel with him from Jerusalem to keep him company. Then we went to dinner.
While he was in his meeting, I sat in a cafe outside the building, reading my book and drinking coffee. The couple at the table next to me left. A hooded crow flew down and perched on the back of the seat next to the table. His eyes moved back and forth, scanning, looking at me and looking at the table of half eaten food, coffee cups and jelly donuts with their red jam and white sugar. This went on for several minutes, back and forth, head turning, eye aimed right at me, and then at the food. Then he hopped off the chair onto the pavement, hopped around a bit, and flew off.
Across the plaza were two pillars. On top of one stood a young boy. On top of the other stood a girl. They were half facing each other. A few minutes later, another hooded crow flew into the plaza, this time landing on the head of the boy. He looked around and flew off.
Behind the pillars were three flag poles. The one nearest to me and most easily visible had a flag of Japan, land of the rising sun. A third crow flew into the plaza and perched on top of the pole flying the Japanese flag, a large red ball on a white background, and then left.
Dusk was falling. Behind the flag poles was a park with large dark trees with broad canopies, a rarity in Israel. Minutes went by without a crow, but then I saw a lone crow fly from one tree to another in the shadows of the park. I wondered about the connections between the four birds, but could see nothing.
By that point it was getting too dark to read so I went into the lobby of the building. The lobby was filled with several large statues of modern art. It has been a while since I’ve sat in the lobby of a building in the business district. I sat watching the tailored suits and felt as if I missed that world slightly. For me, it represents a path once taken and abandoned I feel a certain sadness. I miss the feeling of competence and control, but there is something about that world that has always seemed false. Some part of me is like a raven wanting to fly in and peck away at all the pretenses.
What struck me at first was the contrast between self-possessed men and women walking through the lobby in their tailored suits and the statues, which all seemed to be symbols of vulnerability: a mother with a child, two men wrestling, two large vases on a coffee table in the shape of tear drops or wombs, a beam sticking out from the mezzanine above with a maiden perched on the end as if walking the plank, and an odd looking sculpture that looked like a sea anemone from the depths of the sea where only bathyspheres go.
Then I got up and started walking around. There were many other sculptures. Next to the sea anemone was a pair of outstretched arms holding a bronze expanse and a striving arm grasping at a golden ball. Further back in the lobby was a bronze sculpture that looked part mushroom and part grinding pestle. And way in the back was a semi-circle of sculptures. One of these looked like the squat big beaked raven sometimes found on top of totem poles.
It was titled, “HaHitpartzut HaRishonah”, the first break-out. And then it hit me, the sculptures weren’t sculptures of vulnerability, but of different kinds of power. The maiden on the plank was also the mermaid leading sailors to safety or Athena leading soldiers to battle. The mother and child were the power of nurturing, The vases were the power of tears and creativity. The men wrestling were now clearly Jacob wrestling with an angel, symbols of our search for blessing from above and justice here below. The sea anemone was the power of originality and invention; the arms outstretched, the power of inclusion; the arms reaching for the golden ball, the power of striving and persistence.
The hooded crows had also been pointing out power: food: the power of sustenance and meeting basic needs; the pavement stones of the plaza: the power of groundedness; the boy and girl: the power of relationships; the flag poles: the power of society, politics and nations; the woods beyond: the power of the unconscious.
I have always feared that strength would crowd out love and increase the risk of evil. What all of these forms of power around me helped me see was that there are many, many different kinds of power. The evil associated with power does not lie in power itself, but in using the wrong sort of power in the wrong situation. Only power misplaced oppresses and destroys. Power rightly applied heals and transforms. Ultimately, it is our choice of power that creates either evil or good.
Rape convinced me that I lost all power. I was told by detectives, crisis hotline counsellors, a therapist, and even the director of a rape crisis center what an incredible job I did defending myself. And yet I could not stop rape. For years I couldn’t conceive of a way that I could regain a belief in the effectiveness of my own actions.
The ravens tell me otherwise. Powerlessness was a lie. They showed me that the only power rape took from me was physical power. On a street in Tel-Aviv I learned that our survival and creativity is never dependent on only one type of power. Take one away from us, and there are still so many others to try.
No one wants violence to happen, but how do we get it to stop? How do we stop people inflicting trauma on their fellow human beings? Or is this problem too big? Do we need to just accept that violence happens and focus on picking up the pieces?
There are at least four distinct approaches to reducing or eliminating the impact of violence and human inflicted trauma:
There are strong arguments for each approach, but also limitations on the effectiveness of each strategy. In reality we need all four approaches.
Don't be THAT guy
Focusing solely on the would-be assailant cannot be the entire solution to violence. Perpetrators rarely seek out treatment programs on their own. Many attendees need to be forced into treatment by courts. Thus treatment programs only reach the small percentage of offenders who are investigated and successfully prosecuted. Though they may sometimes prevent repeat attacks, they cannot stop the initial pre-capture run of attacks.
Education in some cases might even be counter productive. Although some people are aggressive because society turns the other way, not all are. Some see legal consequences as a challenge rather than a deterrant. Some offenders get emotional satisfaction from their ability to violate rules that the rest of us hold sacred. They may even admire or enjoy cruelty. The Marquis de Sade even argued that cruelty was the higher good “Cruelty is simply the energy in a man civilization has not yet altogether corrupted: therefore it is a virtue not a vice.” (Philosophy in the Bedroom). The more effective we are in saying such-and-such is against our society’s values, the more attractive that crime is.
Focusing on victims is attractive because an assailant can’t commit a crime if he doesn’t have any potential victims in range. Victims are comfortable targets for prevention efforts because activists and victims are on the same team. Would be assailants have to be convinced not to want something they find desirable. Victims don’t want to be victims. Self defense is in a victim’s self interest. Feeling in control reduces anxiety.
But this can’t be the sole prevention tactic either. Perpetrators aren’t just live wires or wet floors that can be avoided with enough care and attention. They are active aggressors looking for targets. Some are impulsive, but others plan carefully. Some will run at the least fight but others will kill at the least sign of resistance. Most importantly, no target, no matter how wiley can escape all hunters. No fighter, no matter how good can win all their fights.
Although the goal may be empowerment and self-defense, focusing on the potential victim can easily move from empowerment to blame. It is all too easy to go from “I can minimize my risk” to “I am responsible for my risk”. By making the victim the center of attention, we may unwittingly imply that the victim is responsible for their own suffering because they didn’t exercise due care, fight hard enough, or fight clever enough. We also place the victim in double jepardy. If she fights too hard and kills or maims her assailant, she may find herself fighting a civil case or even criminal charges of murder or assault.
An alternative victim centric approach to violence is to focus on the aftermath of an attack. If we can’t prevent violence, perhaps we can help people recover and move on after it happens? This is the motivation behind trauma counselling, as well as various victims rights and shelter projects.
Many crimes happen in secluded situations where the only participants are the assailant and the victim. If the perpetrator won’t stop and the victim cannot avoid him or fend him off, then there is little to do but offer compassion in the aftermath.
Speak out; stand up; Stop hate
Finally, a crime does not end with the actual assault. Even if the assault begins and ends in private, the aftermath when a person turns to others for help is sometimes very public, involving friends, community, and law enforcement. Many a victim has sought help after being attacked only to be rebuffed by community that is more concerned about the stain on the attackers reputation than the suffering of the victim, and quicker to blame the victim than to acknowledge that that the attacker made a horrible and self-destructive choice.
Acknowledging the potentially public nature of crime and violence and its aftermath opens up a fourth response to violence and human inflicted trauma: addressing the bystander. Whether a person sees the crime itself, its initial stages or its aftermath, they can play a significant role in reducing the damage caused by a potential attacker.
Some of the things we can do as bystanders in the initial stages of an attack:
If the attack is on-going:
In the aftermath
Although I like the lyrics of Beyonce’s new song, the visual message and the words are at odds in a way that should give us pause for thought.
The visual message equates power with sexuality over and over again. Even as the words praise college graduates and their power, the visual image is a woman on her knees butt up in the air, sexy but submissive. The lyrics say that we have the power of persuasion, but there are no scenes of women talking, writing, or teaching or any other non-sexual form of persuasion.
Finally, consider the closing image. The closing image is not women in charge but women standing at attention offering a salute to the very riot guard which in an earlier frame had attacked them. The men do not offer a salute back. Rule or submission? Is this song about female empowerment? Or an unintentional satire of common notions of female empowerment?
Nineteen century America denied women the vote, but that didn’t stop William Ross Wallace from bolding proclaiming that “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world‘. Simply proclaiming that women have power does not make it so. As Malcolm Harris writes in the Huffington Post:
As a volunteer and supporter of the CARE organization that works tirelessly on behalf of empowering women and girls around the globe, I know firsthand these lyrics simply are not based on fact. Without getting on my soap box, it is a fact that if we don’t collectively do more to assist organizations like CARE, these young girls may never have an opportunity to contribute to society, let alone run the world.
Women need more than words and pep talks to have power. Without action the only difference between Beyonce and Wallace is the presumed source of power. Wallace in the 1850′s credited motherhood. Today it is sex.
Throughout history woman’s sexuality has been granted almost magical power even when real women of their time had little control over their fates. Helen of Troy is credited with starting the Trojan war. Christopher Marlowe (1590) called her the “face that launched a thousand ships”. Yet for all her power, women in ancient Greece were kept cloistered and not allowed to go out on their own. Cleopatra’s beauty supposedly kept her in charge of Egypt for many years, but it needs to be remembered that the Roman world of her time required nearly all women to be under the guardianship of a man: her father, husband or sometimes sibling.
Despite claims to the contrary, the alleged power of sexuality is seriously limited. The exercise of power requires the ability to control access to rewards. Sexuality could be powerful, but only in a world where women have full control of how much access is offered and when.
So long as society continues to believe that any woman that uses her sexual power to entice cannot be raped then sexual power is not true power. Sexual power cannot control its rewards because society assumes any attempt to create power through sexual interest or limited access is also an open invitation to take it all.
Until we can successfully prosecute the man who rapes a woman in a sexy dress who is belly dancing on the bar half drunk or the boardroom exec wearing a stylish dress with a V-neck practically down to her belly button, sexual power is not going to make women rule the world or even give them equal footing. It simply makes them loose the right to set any boundaries at all.
When women are regularly tarred and feathered in the media for having dared called rape on a powerful sports hero or banker, it is obvious where the real power lies and it isn’t with the women as women. From Roman Polanski to Strauss-Kahn even a hint of a woman’s sex appeal makes her into someone that “wanted it” rather than someone from whom it was taken. Perhaps it would be different if the woman were also a famous director or banker? One would hope, but we can say for certain that simply being sexy isn’t outranking money or fame any time soon. Where we place blame in “my word against yours” situations tells us a lot about our real perceptions of power.
Although If She Cry Out intentionally represents the view points of many religions, its purpose and conception has been deeply influenced by the values of one particular religion, Judaism.
In Judaism the sanctity of life is paramount. Anything that preserves the sanctity of life demands our utmost respect. Anything that violates the sanctity of life deserves deep and thoughtful consideration. It must be uprooted from our lives and our society. Furthermore this uprooting must involve human choices and changes in society. We cannot sit back and wait for divine redemption to make the world better but must join our will to God’s to fill the world with justice, compassion, and mercy.
The notion that even the smallest of us has something to say or do to make the world a better place permetes Judaism and even finds its way into Moses’s final farewell speech.
For this commandment which I command you this day, it is not hidden from you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it.” Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say “Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it?” Rather the word is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, so you may do it. See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God , to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statues and his judgements: then thou shalt live and multiply; and the LORD your God shall bless you in the land into which you go to possess. (Deut. 30:11-16).
Lest there be any thought that “keep his commandments” means purely ritual or religious activity, the prophet Micah has this to say in the middle of a long diatrabe about God’s disappointment when religion is reduced to ritual:
What does the LORD require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8).
Our obligations to one another and our obligations to the created environment are close to our hearts. We don’t need to be experts on climate change, nor professors of ethics. We don’t need to be popes, or imams, or rabbis. Our contribution lies somewhere much closer: in our mouths, and in our hearts, and in all that we are able to do.
Tonight will start the most holy day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. It is a day when Jews reflect in depth on what it means to be partners with God, what it means to promote justice and mercy, and what our own individual roles are in that effort.
But I pray tonight not just for myself, but also for the world, that each of us finds the wisdom in our hearts and mouths. It is there for all of us, Jew and non Jew alike because each of us carries within us the sacred breath of life. Each of us was created to make the world new again with justice and compassion, with words and action.
Ken Yehi Ratzon (May it be Your Will)
Beth Frank-Backman
Editor and founder, If She Cry Out.
Unity monument at Bennet Place State Historical Site (Anne Rubin)
My life has been shaped by two crises: my upbringing in a traumatic household and the rape. I have distilled two core values out of these experiences: the sacredness of humanity and the importance of choice and responsibility.
For some reason these two notions: humanity and responsibility feel like two pillars defining a door. They seem to complement each other. Respect is an attitude of the heart. Responsibility requires observation of the world outside ourselves and how we affect it. Respect for humanity is a precursor of action. Responsibility for our choices takes care of the aftermath.
We seem to have a built-in understanding of the fundamental value of human life. With the exception of the worst sociopaths there are some things most human beings just won’t do to each other. To a certain extent respect just happens and we take it for granted. Only the extremes of respect and disrespect seem to require a great deal of intentionality. On the other hand, responsibility can never happen without a conscious choice. For some perverse reason our natural inclination seems to be to shift responsibility away from the source: onto others when we are at fault,onto ourselves when others are at fault.
After the rape the notion of sacred humanity was burned in my consciousness. The rapist intentionally profaned the sacredness of human life and the body that contains it. The severe absence of respect for the sacred enabled me to see clearly something so fundamental to day to day living that it is almost invisible. No experience in life taught me about the sacredness of life like rape did. No book or tradition either.
The situation in my family taught me forced me to think deeply about responsibility, but unlike the rape, its lessons have revealed themselves slowly over time.
In my 20′s my family situation forced me to wrestled with the question of how life could be at once both so wonderful and painful. Since my 20′s, responsibility and choice has formed the cornerstone of my approach to the problem of evil, which I see rooted in God’s odd and paradoxical idea that love is only possible in a world that has free will. It is paradoxical because many of things that happen as a result of free will are in fact the antithesis of love. However we cannot love without free will, because love is not love if it is not a choice.
In my 40′s this was not enough. I began to realize that the pain in my family had created life long insecurities that seemed to flow from one generation to the next. As I reflected further on the causes of pain in my family, I began to see that something was missing in my understanding of choice. To truly understand choice we need to see both sides of choice: its necessity for love and the price of disowning it.
My conclusions in my 20′s grew out an assumption that choice was a given, a fact of life from which we could not escape. As I’ve reflected on my family’s history of hurt, I realize that while choice is a given, awareness of choice is not. My family history was built around a pervasive denial of responsibility for hurtful actions that made victims responsible for their own suffering. This denial not only made it hard for hurt to heal, but allowed it to perpetuate from one generation to the next.
As much evil in the world comes from the way we disown our choices as the way we make them.
