Follow
Feb. 14, 2021
Yin and yang. Prof. Daniel Blatman could not have chosen a more miserable simile for describing the way Poles related to Jews during the Holocaust.
The historian (wearing his Chinese philosophy expert hat?) wrote in Haaretz on February 8 that the rescue and the killing of Jews were “two intertwining phenomena” that could not be disentangled from one another. Thus, he explained, the reality was too complex to allow a distinction between “anti-Semitic denouncers of Jews” and “moral saviors of Jews.”
Really, Prof. Blatman? Can you not distinguish between Jozef Ulma, who hid Jews in his barn out of pure humanistic sentiments and was murdered along with his family after being caught by the Germans, and Piotr Binczycki, who burst into another farm where a Jewish family was hiding, shot the wife immediately and tortured her children and before shooting them as well? True harmony. Have we mentioned yin and yang?
Supporters of President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Jan. 6, 2021. (CNS/Reuters/Stephanie Keith)
In a virtual interfaith seminar meeting earlier this school year, a Black student from St. Benedict s Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey, shared that he d been followed by a police car while skateboarding through a park in a sweatsuit. He realized from that day on that if he s ever going to be skateboarding in the park, he needs to watch what he s wearing, said Daniel Bank, another student in the seminar, from Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School in Livingston.
Because Bank is white, he said, he knows he would not seem suspicious to a police officer were he to do the same thing. The disparity made an impression on him. With instances like that, you can see this line that separates what white people and Black people can do, not because of anything except for the color of their skin, Bank said.
Opinion/Janice Harvey: D.C. or bust
By Janice Harvey
Will we ever get there? I wonder.
Once upon a time or a year ago my friend Rick and I were planning a trip to Washington, D.C. Despite my addiction to all things political, I’ve never visited the nation’s capital. Our itinerary was in Rick’s hands for two reasons: his ability to plan is second to none, and he’s “been there, done that” twice. My intention was to wander two steps behind him like I always do when we visit museums. We were booked into a two-bedroom condo, and our train tickets were paid for. Yes, train tickets what better way to journey to D.C.?