Thank you Hen for another thought provoking piece. Clearly debate is something that needs to happen to promote understanding and cohesion. Cancel culture frustrates me immensely. The reasons are probably myriad but social media, and wariness play big roles. I have “Jeremys” who have claimed they liked discussion but I guess it was only when the discussion went their way. Antisemitism is not going to be helped by ignoring it. We might not win the debates for now but people need new ideas in order to process them.
I love this. It never occurred to me that my craving for deep, honest conversation and to-the- point questions could have something to do with my Jewish origins. (I've been called charmless by at least one friend.) I'm also also Polish, though, and Poles also tend to prefer getting straight to the point. Maybe during centuries of coexistence Poles and Jews rubbed off on each other.
Thank you. I still recall - vividly - my first day of London Business School. This was decades go. My next door neighbor in the rooms at the college was a Welsh gal, who had never met a Jew. Let alone an American one. We got to talking that night - as students do - and she asked “what did the Jews do that caused Hitler to want to murder them?”. My first reaction was “this is a joke”, right? How could someone so ignorant have gained admission to the premier business school in the UK? But she was serious. I tried explaining that the holocaust didn’t occur because its victims did anything wrong. That didn’t satisfy her. Jews must have provoked their own murder she believed. There was no resolution. She said she was going to ask her father, as clearly I was hiding some information. After that, I kept her at arm’s length. Some questions are impossible to answer when the questioner has a closed mind.
Thank you Hen for another thought provoking piece. Clearly debate is something that needs to happen to promote understanding and cohesion. Cancel culture frustrates me immensely. The reasons are probably myriad but social media, and wariness play big roles. I have “Jeremys” who have claimed they liked discussion but I guess it was only when the discussion went their way. Antisemitism is not going to be helped by ignoring it. We might not win the debates for now but people need new ideas in order to process them.
I love this. It never occurred to me that my craving for deep, honest conversation and to-the- point questions could have something to do with my Jewish origins. (I've been called charmless by at least one friend.) I'm also also Polish, though, and Poles also tend to prefer getting straight to the point. Maybe during centuries of coexistence Poles and Jews rubbed off on each other.
Thank you. I still recall - vividly - my first day of London Business School. This was decades go. My next door neighbor in the rooms at the college was a Welsh gal, who had never met a Jew. Let alone an American one. We got to talking that night - as students do - and she asked “what did the Jews do that caused Hitler to want to murder them?”. My first reaction was “this is a joke”, right? How could someone so ignorant have gained admission to the premier business school in the UK? But she was serious. I tried explaining that the holocaust didn’t occur because its victims did anything wrong. That didn’t satisfy her. Jews must have provoked their own murder she believed. There was no resolution. She said she was going to ask her father, as clearly I was hiding some information. After that, I kept her at arm’s length. Some questions are impossible to answer when the questioner has a closed mind.
yikes.