Sultan Doughan earned her PhD in Anthropology from UC Berkeley and currently serves as post-doctoral fellow at the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies. We spoke with her about her current Anthropology course on the meaning of memorials. The conversation is edited for clarity.

EWCJS: Why do we put up memorials? What’s their purpose? 

Sultan Doughan:  When I say memorial, I refer to public sculptures and monuments as well. A memorial is characterized by its function to prompt us to build a particular relationship with a past event. We put up memorials to make claims about the past in the present, but we also do it for future generations. We memorialize important events or personages we associate with such events. Consider war memorials for example. They remember the fallen soldiers and immortalize them as foundational for the national-political order. The memorial commutes the soldier’s death into a sacrifice and also keeps his or her memory alive to the community. Memorials of this sort are a recent phenomenon, because they combine political events with a notion of history that orients the modern state and its legal institutions toward the future. 

EWCJS: Surely there have been memorials from time immemorial.

Sultan Doughan: There were older monuments and sculptures of course, and in a sense temples and houses of worship are memorials, too, but religious sites prompt and organize memories to cultivate a tradition that transcends our secular-historicist understanding of past, present and future. However, modern memorials have a very different function; they organize and trigger very different practices. The purpose I think is most important: remembering the dead and offering a form of grief, or bringing justice by displaying their death publicly as something that served a greater political purpose. Or a memorial can point to death that still needs to be reckoned with such as the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, informally known as the  Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. The Lynching Memorial commemorates a particular form of murderous crime that Black communities have been experiencing since the abolition of slavery. As a site that thematizes lynching, it still asks for justice by displaying unresolved and ongoing injustice. Those who visit might see a warning from a racist past, but also the possibility to reflect on the ongoing racism and inequality. The memorial lends itself to both of these perspectives, by having names etched into the hanging slabs and short case descriptions on placards. It is a memorial that warns and prompts to reflect on an unfolding history. 

EWCJS: You grew up in Germany, a place many associate with its Nazi past, but that is also hailed for the way it has been coming to terms with that past. How would you characterize the difference between German and US memorial cultures? 

Sultan Doughan: In the German language there is a crucial difference between ‘warning memorials’ (Mahnmal) and ‘thinking memorials’ (Denkmal). Warning memorials can display a catastrophe and a stain of shame and guilt such as the various memorials that are dedicated to Jewish suffering and death under the Nazi-regime. Some of these memorials include photos of Nazis, but the purpose of the site is clear, and it is obvious that what is on display is not to be celebrated or engaged with in a casual manner. 

‘Thinking memorials,’ in contrast, have a wider range of expression and can be dedicated to all kinds of historical events and public personages. The main objective is to make you think, wonder, and reflect. In a way, the German memorial landscape provides you with a normative map, whereas in the US, you can have many different memorials standing equally next to one another without that distinction in naming, but you might see differences in material, form, color and structure. 

In the US, a widely-held assumption seems to have been that all these different and mutually exclusive memories can coexist peacefully. But as we have seen over the last few months, with statues beheaded and monuments defaced or disputed for what they represent, it has become clear that these memorials are not necessarily growing out of a historical past, but are often the result of a desire to shape the political present through myths that have sustained a certain social hierarchy. Many of the confederate statues were built not right after the Civil War but during the Jim Crow era that cemented racial segregation. So clearly these were not warning memorials meant to remind citizens of a catastrophic past, but they served to display a reclaimed and renewed past through the towering figures of confederate generals. Memorials that came directly out of the Civil War and honored the Confederacy were usually commissioned by the “United Daughters of the Confederacy” and here is an interesting gender-aspect to it. As widows, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters these women were grieving the loss and defeat of their male kin and remembering them as unjustly broken and killed heroes. As women and relatives no one could possibly deny their felt grievances. Certainly showing grief was more acceptable for women than for men. Building monuments to remember confederate soldiers as honorable heroes meant to keep up a certain spirit, even when that spirit is nominally defeated. In other words, even those memorials were not simply expressions of grief over private loss but the expression of a patriotic spirit with all its nationalist, mythical, and racial imaginaries. Perhaps it is no coincidence that over the years these memorials have acquired celebratory status and are not associated with rites of mourning. 

EWCJS: What exactly is at stake here? Is this about contested pasts, about resistance to change, or a struggle for the future? Can there be memorials that overcome, rather than enhance, the racial and political divides?

Sultan Doughan: So, this is a really interesting point.  First of all, I think US-Americans (please allow me that generalization, I will specify in a bit)  have a curious relationship to history. In a way, I think that Germany, my primary research context, and the US have a lot in common: a fascination with, and an anxiety about, their own past. History, in this sense, means to be able to tell a story, to have a narrative about a place, to come to a certain judgment on an era or a political event. History, as an object of national story-telling, is often reenacted by volunteers, who participate with a sense of pride. But the way history is displayed in monumental ways seems like an anxious gesture to meticulously reproduce artefacts of evidence that Americans are really rooted here as a nation, when in fact the most iconic memorial sites point to the inability to be one nation. Consider for example some of the monuments on the National Mall in DC, such as the Lincoln Memorial, or the Vietnam War Memorial that caused a controversy because it was designed by Maya Lin, an Asian-American female architect. History as a narrative of certain events that can be memorialized then remains fragmented and points to divisions within larger society. These divisions are never fully articulated in monumental display, but what event becomes memorialized and which communities are included in public display is telling in itself. It is no coincidence that Martin Luther King Jr. chose those particular stairs in front of the Lincoln Memorial to deliver his famous “I have a dream” speech. Besides the fact that Lincoln led the Civil War to abolish slavery and promised some form of basic equality, the memorial itself can be understood as a tribute to this incomplete promise. Dr. King literally stepped into the Pantheon of the United States to bear witness to the absence of African-Americans from these sacralized spaces and laid a claim for a different future.

EWCJS: This is very interesting. Can you say more about that? 

Sultan Doughan: Absolutely. And here I want to become more specific about my earlier claim about US-Americans. African-Americans are never fully present in these grand histories about the US. I think scholarship on African-American history is an absolutely vibrant field, but it’s knowledge and archive is barely reflected in public memorials and monuments. There are of course initiatives to build memorials to major events and eminent personages in African-American history such as “The Embrace” Boston is planning to honor Marin Luther King Jr’s non-violent legacy, or memorials to slavery such as the one on the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, campus. But one also has to keep in mind that most parts of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, were built by Thomas Jefferson’s slaves. Some of those campus sections are a UNESCO world heritage site. They may as well be a memorial site in itself, bearing witness to what African-Americans have contributed to this country by their very labor, while being excluded from benefiting from it. But what do these memorials tell us about the conditions of African-American life right now? What do they tell us about the incomplete achievements of political equality, given that African-Americans remain underrepresented in elite spaces like the university? Given that Black lives are systemically victimized by the manner in which law and order is administered across the country, what do we make of a memorial that tells us that we should be proud of Dr. King’s non-violent legacy? Why do we exceptionalize non-violence when we memorialize African-American history? Is it because, deep inside we know that the violence of 400 years of brutal inequality could have begotten far more violent reactions from African-American communities? My point here is that these clearly designated memorials seem to give shape to a present anxiety of wanting to correct history, when simply all the signs point in a different direction. 

EWCJS: If I understand you correctly, there is more to memorials than just the commemoration of a past.

Sultan Doughan: History in itself is more than just a narrative account of past events. Genre and emplotment shape our understanding of a certain history, but also the kinds of concepts we use in telling the story. And I am obviously saying this as someone who engages with history not as a historian, who reads archival documents, but as an anthropologist. My basic unit of analysis is the subject whose actions are embedded in a particular practice and rationale. From this perspective, memorials are a fairly recent phenomenon. Communities and groups have built these types of monuments with the intention of shaping a particular kind of modern subject, one that thinks within the horizon of the nation-state. 

On the one hand, the desired subject of these memorials is aligned with a particular public narrative, a politics of memory, if you will. By virtue of that narrative, communities re-organize and synchronize themselves within the time of the nation-state. This may include claims to transitional and racial justice. On the other hand, as objects embedded in a practice and a particular narrative, memorials change because the commemorating subjects change due to generational shifts, due to the emergence of different sentiments, due to shifts in political orientation. In other words, changes in the political present make it possible to forge a different attitude toward a memorialized past event, such that it can no longer be reconciled with the promise of national belonging, citizenship, or justice. Memorials can turn into empty symbols or remainders of broken politics. At the peril of making a presentist argument, I would say that memorials also have the function to sustain a political order in the present. When that political order crumbles, memorials lose power as well. The desire to break them is interesting in itself, because most often something is left when a statue is removed, an empty pedestal or pieces of the monument point to the absence of something that used to be there. Perhaps not visible anymore, removed out of sight, but those who know the history can see behind the absence another layer of a present past. Ruins are examples of indexing absence through presence. The full meaning and effect of such a ruin is a fascinating subject of research. I am mostly thinking of confederate and colonial statues in the US, Germany, and the UK. For many people who have been active protesting on behalf of Black lives, confederate statues are a materialized piece of segregationist terror that Americans of color have lived with. In the UK, the story is about addressing post-colonial inequalities, decolonization in its materially inflected sense. In Germany, a consequential debate about Germany’s colonial past has not really started yet.  But in all of these cases, a more thorough discussion about racial inequalities is needed. These sedimentations of historical events have shaped us as communities, societies, and nations. They shape the way we approach these built artefacts with our senses and sensibilities. These sedimentations are only epitomized in the memorial, but never just residing there. History education and public commemoration inculcate a form of experience that is expected by institutions of power. 

 EWCJS: Who is responsible for creating memorials?  In Boston, the Jewish community raised money and helped build a highly visible and public Holocaust memorial. The Irish famine memorial was funded by a trust supported by private donors representing Boston’s Irish-American community. Doesn’t this suggest that many memorials we see here are simply a reflection of the multi-ethnic makeup of American society? 

Sultan Doughan: Ideally, the community affected has a say in the memorial, as in the examples you have mentioned. But there is something fascinating about your examples, because they reflect a passage from the old world and its burdens to America as the newly found safe haven. To memorialize the Irish famine and the Holocaust here and now associates geographical relocation with the judgement that things have been better since the arrival in the New World. In a way, this dovetails well with the story of the US about itself as a liberated post-colony. Europe is a space of terror, injustice, scarcity and poverty, while America provides space for betterment and communal revival. There is certainly an old world/new world divide here, but also a promise of those who left not to forget and from this pledge to cultivate their own communal identity. 

In my survey of memorials in the US, I have noticed that memorials of tragedy are usually attributed to the outside. This outside is either territorially external, as in the Vietnam War Memorial, or it is a spirit of evil that should be banished and removed. Monuments that commemorate slavery and violence against African-Americans in this country reverses this logic in that it casts the US as a territory of captivity and tragedy. It therefore counters the narrative of freedom and democracy that the US has produced about itself and exported to the rest of the world. 

EWCJS: What’s the history of changing and removing memorials? How does a memorial change once it is placed in a museum or a collection designed to remind us of a bygone part of history, good or bad?

Sultan Doughan: I think a memorial can only change when it does not produce the same sensibilities anymore, and rather becomes a disturbance or a stain. I do not know the history of removing memorials, but I know that for example the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue was a big media event.  The image circulated widely and was taken as evidence that Iraqis have finally liberated themselves from their dictator. Documentary footage, however, showed later that a group of men were brought in a bus from outside of Baghdad to do this act, and they were also aided by an American tank. In other words the toppling was staged. Of course, we don’t really know the motives of the participants, but it seems that the act of visible destruction was powerful enough to stand as a claim in itself. Famous cases of toppling memorials occurred in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, where gigantic statues of communist leaders such as Lenin and Stalin were torn down. It turns out that the Russian government actually saved many of these sculptures by dumping them in the sea. From memorial to museum is an interesting question, one that has been on my mind recently, when the Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque, once again. The building was originally a Byzantine Roman imperial church that, after the Fall of Constantinople became a mosque and that the Kemalist Republic of Turkey turned into a museum. To turn it back into a mosque, as was just done, demonstrates the decline of the Christian community, and – as a mosque in a country full of mosques – it is a site of Sunni-Muslim supremacy and an expression of religious-nationalist politics. I am not sure if it’s worse than having it kept as a museum;  this would be an empirical question for the affected communities. It remains to be seen who will use this converted site for regular prayer. In this case, we went from claiming the site of another community as something that, while passé, is a cultural heritage worthy of preservation to claiming that same site for the purposes of majoritarian politics. This form of converting the meaning and function of a heritage site is not unique to Turkish politics. For example, a former Palestinian mosque in Safad was recently turned into a fancy Israeli restaurant. It seems that the mosque was partly destroyed and not in use anymore, but what became of it was decided by agencies and rationales from outside of the community that was originally attached to the site. 

EWCJS: So what do you do in your course?

Sultan Doughan: My course on memorials deals less with these actions of repurposing. Instead I bring together notions of racial and transitional justice, after violent events, with the emergence of a built site. I want to understand how memorials become sites of evidence and claim-making as well as the kinds of practices they trigger and invite. For communities that have been the victims of violence, memorial sites become a place to unload and organize sentiments of grief, despair, hope, or even just a site to cultivate these sentiments. At the same time, memorials can also be completely co-opted by a nationalist politics or politics of denial or refusal, for example, when they are built by the community of the perpetrators who now want to help repair and reconcile. I am thinking for example of the war memorial built in Germany during the 1990s that commemorated all victims of war of all wars. This gesture also included Jewish victims, but the statue was a version of the Pieta leaning over her son, turning a specifically Christian image of a mother crying over her killed child into a universal gesture. But the Pieta, a well-known image, still represents the Virgin Mary. It is circulated as a Christian image of compassion. So how are we to understand this gesture in a memorial site that is supposedly also inclusive of Jewish victims? And should all victims be grouped together when there is a glaring inequality in the distribution of compensations? Does grouping them together enable a better or fairer distribution of justice? Again, I am obviously speaking here from the research case of Germany that has generated these partly unresolved questions. In the US-context we might see more of that in the future, as the demand for reparations gains more traction. This demand will have implications for other groups as well, such as the indigenous First Nations. So, in this sense I am interested in memorials as these ambivalent artifacts that have an effect on us and shape how we mourn, seek justice, remember, and imagine past and future in a nation-state founded on originary violence. In the course, I explore different historical cases and complicate notions and concepts that grow out of human rights discourse. I ask how these concepts, which emanate from those in power, develop a life of their own as they are perceived by social collectives. These concepts become organizing devices for certain groups to orient themselves in new experiences of violence.

EWCJS: Many thanks for speaking with us and good luck with your course! 

Dear Students and Friends of the Elie Wiesel Center at Boston University:

As we enter the Jewish New Year and the season of High Holidays known as yamim nora’im, or Days of Awe, we celebrate the renewal of creation. We proclaim divine kingship by listening to the call of the shofar, and we prepare to give account on the Day of Atonement. The German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) emphasized that Jewish ritual centered on the purity of the soul, which he took as a task we must take upon ourselves every day. The creator renews our soul every morning, but we must purify it ourselves as we stand before the Eternal Judge on the Day of Atonement and every day of our lives. Our tradition requires confession of sins before we can be forgiven. Our ritual prayers state this confession in the first person plural. Why? Because all sins, even those between us and our Creator, affect those around us. No human being is an island. Hence, we are told, God cannot forgive us unless we first ask forgiveness of those we have failed. 

This year, we must ask the forgiveness of our Black and brown sisters and brothers whose rights to equality and justice we have ignored too long. We must ask their forgiveness especially now when we find that African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities are particularly hard hit by a pandemic that our nation failed to address as quickly and as forcefully as the obligation of pikuah nefesh would have required. We must ask forgiveness of all of our fellow creatures whom we failed to protect when we ignored, year after year, the signs of climate change and global warming. Our planet, the habitable world that came into being in the beginning when God spoke it into existence, feels the force of human hubris that some say was instilled in us by the very words of Sefer Bereshit: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, lord it over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, and all of the living things crawling the earth!” What does it mean that God created us in his image and his likeness? According to the great medieval Andalusian philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), better known as the Rambam, we are alike God only in regard to our share in reason. As Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote in his posthumous Ethics, acting with reason is the condition of human happiness. 

Spinoza also makes it clear that it is reason that teaches us to prefer long-term advantages over short-term satisfactions. We all know what needs to happen and what we need to do, in order for this globe to remain habitable, but we blind ourselves to the consequences science tells us are inevitable if we don’t act now. We have to change our habits. We need to stop ignoring science and act with reason, even if it means that we have to make do with less now so that those who come after us will have something. 

Hermann Cohen believed there was a deep agreement between progressive social and legal reform and the Jewish idea of the messianic age, that progressive politics, the promotion of well-being for all, was not just a rational human obligation but an ideal guarded by Jewish religious life. As we prepare for the High Holidays, let us remember that tikkun olam, the repair of a broken world, while it may be too much for any one individual to accomplish, remains our collective obligation.

May the New Year be blessed and sweet for all of us.

Michael Zank, PhD
Professor of Religion, Jewish, and Medieval Studies
Director, EWCJS
2020-21 Honorary Starr Fellow, CJS, Harvard University

by Ingrid Anderson, PhD,
Associate Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies

Ingrid Anderson earned Masters and Doctoral Degrees in Religion, with a specialization in Jewish Studies, at Boston University, where she has been teaching in the Kilachand Honors College, the CAS Writing Program, and the Jewish Studies program of the College of Arts and Sciences. This year, she has spearheaded teaching a new course, titled World Cultures of the Jews, which is a required course for the Minor in Jewish Studies. Her first book Ethics and Suffering since the Holocaust (2016) is a study of ethics as “first philosophy” in the works of Elie Wiesel, Emmanuel Levinas, and Richard Rubenstein.

 The topic of Jews and race is complicated. But exploring race is more important now than ever. The Black Lives Matter movement has prompted many white Americans to become more aware of “white fragility” and white privilege. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S., as tracked by the Anti-Defamation League since 1979, reached an all-time high in 2019. 

Officially, Jews have long been considered “free white persons” in the U.S. They were permitted to become naturalized citizens under a 1790-law passed by the first Congress. Yet in 1911, Jews were re-classified as “not quite white” by the Dillingham Commission Report, which identified 36 different European “races,” and some Jews were classified as “Hebrew.” The report was largely a reaction to the millions of Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe who flocked to America since the early 1880s. The first wave of refugees fled a Czarist Russia that fomented anti-Jewish violence. Other violent incidents followed in 1903 and 1905 (Kishinev pogroms). Ashkenazi Jews brought with them dreams of equality, and many were instrumental in creating the labor movement. America was, in Yiddish, di goldene medine.

The influx of Ashkenazi Jews, who today make up about 80% of American Jewry, profoundly changed the demography of the American Jewish population. The first Jews to settle in the Americas had been Sephardi Jews from Southern Europe and North Africa. The two oldest synagogues in the U.S., Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI and Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue, Charleston, SC are Sephardi, and they are still in use today.

In 1924, the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act (also known as the 1924 Immigration Act) established a quota system that limited primarily Jewish and Slavic immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe and barred Asian populations completely. This racialization of Jewishness set the tone for the interwar period as the most anti-Semitic period in American history. In the decades following the end of World War II, life began to improve for many American Jews, especially for those who had served in the war and were eligible to receive GI Bill benefits that emphasized education. The GI Bill helped foster a long term expansion in white wealth, including white Jewish wealth. Black Americans benefited far less from it than whites, especially in the South. The GI Bill did not, in fact, lead to a significant growth in Black wealth. The law benefited many American Jews, especially those who “presented” as white, even though religious stereotypes and prejudice against the Jews prevailed, leaving them with a sense of distrust toward non-Jewish America’s “embrace” of Jews.

However, not all Jews are white people, even if most Americans say they are. 12-15% of American Jews are people of color, and many young Jews who grew up in multiracial households identify as non-white.  This means that 1 million of America’s 7.2 million Jews are non-white, and Jews of Color account for approximately the same percentage of the American Jewish population as Black Americans represent in the general population.  Counting Inconsistencies, a new study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education, found considerable inconsistencies in how Jews of Color were counted in recent population studies of American Jews, because many studies didn’t even ask about race or ethnicity. This is likely because they assume that Jewishness is a race or ethnicity that any Jew would name as their primary identification. That many researchers who focus on Jews and Jewishness think of Jews as white and of Eastern European extraction—with a few “statistically insignificant” exceptions that “prove the rule”—means that American Jewry is largely ignorant of its own diverse nature and subsequently denies the powerful presence of racism in their own institutions.

Founder and Executive Director of Jews in All Hues, Jared Jackson, reports that on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish liturgical year, he gets calls from Jews of Color who are refused entrance to their synagogues. Their Jewishness is denied because of the color of their skin. Many Jews report that their experiences of micro-aggression and racism (subtle as well as overt) keep them from participating in Jewish communal life as much as they would like. Jews are not, in fact, “a race.” The Jewish community is much more diverse than many may suspect: Jewish communal life is a global affair; hence our required course on "World Cultures of the Jews" (JS100).

Jews of Color experience racism from their fellow Jews and anti-Semitism from non-Jews on a regular basis.  Jews of Color are often demeaned in conversations with their fellow Jews in ways that white Jews are likely not even aware of. The most basic example of this are questions like “So, HOW are you Jewish?” or “When DID your family convert?” Jews of Color are even accused of lying when they tell fellow Jews that they are Jewish. Despite their physical presence in Jewish spaces, they are often made to feel invisible.

What can white American Jews do, who want to join the fight against racism and support anti-racist organizations and policies? Start in our own backyards! Many white people who want to support the Black Lives Matter movement turn to People of Color to tell them how. This is a mistake. If you want to join the fight against racism, teach yourself about the history of racism and white privilege. There are many resources available. Find out exactly how white privilege works, and if you are a white Jew, you need to understand that, in the U.S., white Jews have white privilege. Interrogate your understanding of Jewishness. Bravely consider how you, as a white Jew, despite the scourge of American anti-Semitism, may succeed more easily than Americans of Color because of your whiteness and in spite of your Jewishness.  Learn more about American Judaism by studying the work of Jews of Color and support their efforts. Learn from the work of Jews of Color. Here are some suggestions on where to start:

There are many books, websites, newsletters, and films to choose from. Consider Rabbi Sandra Lawson, the first openly gay, female Black rabbi in the world. Read the amazing words of Shais Rishon, known as MaNishtana. His books include Thoughts From a Unicorn: 100% Black, 100%. 0% Safe, and The Rishoni Illuminated Legacy Hagadah; if you prefer fiction, look at  Ariel Samson, Free Lance Rabbi, Rishon’s remarkable first novel. This is the story of a “black Jewish Orthodox rabbi looking for love, figuring out his life, and floating between at least two worlds.”

If you want to become involved in active Jewish anti-racism, consider Bend the Arc, a progressive Jewish action organization that has joined the Black Lives Matter movement.  Or visit Jews in all Hues on Facebook to find out how this organization facilitates conversations about race. Subscribe to Alma and JTA, which regularly feature pieces written by Jews of Color.

How about Yitz “Y Love” Jordan? Yitz Jordan is a Black Jewish gay man who is a musician and JOC (Jews of color) activist.  Jordan founded The Tribe Herald, a JOC news outlet, and is currently raising money for a JCC for Jews of Color. Shais Rishon and Y Love are also featured in Punk Jews.

Explore the work of Yavillah McCoy, who founded Ayecha, a non-profit Jewish organization that provides Jewish diversity education and advocacy for Jews of Color in the U.S. She is currently CEO of Dimensions, an organization that provides training and consultancy in diversity, equity, and inclusion. Or check out the play she co-wrote, The Colors of Water.  Follow Amadi Lovelace, whose Twitter feed is an excellent source for information during BLM protests. Go to Tema Smith’s website, a collection of valuable resources about community building, Jews, race, diversity, and interfaith families.

Want to learn about initiatives for “building and advancing the professional, organizational, and communal field for Jews of color”? Visit the Jews of Color Initiative website.  Attend a live online Be’chol Lashon event that celebrates Jewish diversity.

American Jewish communities are not alone in struggling with intra-Jewish racism. As painful as it is for some to acknowledge, Israeli society also suffers from long-standing prejudice against Jews of Color, let alone Jews of Arab origin. Israel is the home of  diverse communities of Jews. Nearly 15% of the Jewish population is of African descent, 11% are of Asian descent, 38% are of Arab and other Middle Eastern extractions, and only 36% are of European descent.  For many of my students, the diversity reflected in Israeli society offers a first glimpse of the surprising racial and ethnic heterogeneity of Jews and Jewishness. But this diversity is not always gladly embraced. Read the heartbroken words that model, singer, and radio host Tahuonia Rubel penned when Ethiopian Jews took to the streets during the summer of 2019 to protest the murders of Ethiopian Jews by Israeli police.  Here is an excerpt from a June Instagram post from Rubel’s feed responding to Israeli celebrity posts stating that Black Lives Matter:

So much grief is caused here [in Israel] to ‘Blacks’ as you say in your do-gooder posts that I don’t remember that one of you uploaded a black picture when we blocked the roads [in summer 2019]! When you called us hooligans! When we broke glass!  When we burned tires! When we cried tearfully the name of Yosef Salamsa! Solomon Tekah! Yehuda Biadga! And so many mothers who are crying every day for their children!! Get out of the horrifying bubble you live in! ... You are far from empathizing with our pain!

Given that 40% of all Ethiopian Jewish men serving in the Israeli Defense Force have “seen the inside of a military prison,” Israel, too, must commit itself to identifying racist policies, abolishing them, and in turn adopt anti-racist policies.

Last but not least, white American Jews, when American Jews of Color like Shais Rishon say that “at least there is Israel” offers no comfort to them in times of American political turmoil, listen.  They are telling you that the idea that Israel is a shelter from the disease of bigotry for all Jews is still, for now, just a dream.

by Rabbi Greg Weisman, (CAS ’05) who is a rabbi at Temple Beth El of Boca Raton, FL, where he is striving to make his city, county, state, and nation more just and fair for all.

I came to BU because of Prof. Wiesel. Like so many Jews I turned to his writings to help me understand the legacy of the Holocaust, and was inspired to find a man who turned his experience of horror into a life devoted to preventing others from suffering a similar fate. I came to BU hoping that just by being on campus with him I might catch a glimpse or a morsel of his moral wisdom. I was blessed to learn from him in class in the fall of 2004. The class met in STH, the School of Theology building, a building where another one of our University’s Nobel Laureates studied, Dr. Martin Luther King. When I reflect on that, the weight of it still hits me: I sat in a classroom with Elie Wiesel, in the same building where Martin Luther King studied.

The two men came from very different backgrounds, but the legacies they left behind have much in common. Both were gifted with extraordinary eloquence and they used their words, written and spoken, to inspire others to pursue causes of justice and peace. They reached generations of people across the globe and urged them to care for the vulnerable, the forgotten or ignored, and that each of us, regardless of our station in life, has a role to play in that work.

For the last seven years, I have served as a rabbi in Boca Raton, Florida. My journey into the rabbinate started at BU, through my work in the Jewish Studies program, which has since been renamed in Prof. Wiesel’s honor. In my work, I often reflect on my memories from that time, in particular on the lessons from Professor Wiesel's class on “Literary Responses to Oppression.” With the rise of national awareness for the pervasive ill effects of systemic racism and race-based inequality, members of my community and I have been poring over modern-day responses to the oppression of People of Color in the US. We travelled together in the past year to Georgia and Alabama to visit the sites, memorials, and museums of the Civil Rights era. We have listened to podcasts, watched films, and read books and articles about white privilege, racist violence, and most recently, antiracism. While this learning was in light of the ongoing struggle for racial justice, it took an even more pressing turn after the murder of George Floyd.  When the leadership of our local Black community organized a Peace March through Boca Raton, my congregation turned out in great numbers in support. Our membership wanted to learn more and asked us to put together a panel on race in our community with a local pastor, a community leader, and a Black member of our congregation sharing their stories.

I also heard from members of my congregation that they wanted to read together and discuss How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, that we might learn from him how we can combat the ills of racism in our day through our own lives and behavior. Right after I announced this book discussion group to the entire community, the news broke that Dr. Kendi would be relocating to BU. Like many alumni I felt a sense of pride, and was curious about what prompted his decision. When I heard that he chose to come to BU because of its history of the acceptance of students of Color and because it was where Dr. King pursued his doctorate, I thought back to the STH building and my time in those classrooms.

As a Jew and a rabbi, what compels me about Dr. Kendi’s thinking is that it leaves no room for standing by. The core message in his book, and of antiracism in general, is that everything we do either reinforces a system of racism that has been erected and reinforced over centuries or strives to tear that edifice down. In each action we take, we are either being racist or being antiracist. There is no neutrality when it comes to racism. As I processed his argument and began to think about it in Jewish terms, I couldn’t help but think about the acceptance speech Professor Wiesel gave in Oslo when he received the Nobel Prize for Peace, where he cautioned against neutrality: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

The burden Dr. King, Prof. Wiesel, and Dr. Kendi lay upon us is great. “The day is short, the work is much" (Avot 2:16), Jewish tradition says. But along with that burden, these great minds of BU inspire me each and every day.

I am a BU professor of religion and director of an academic center named for Elie Wiesel. For those who don’t know, Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) was a Jew from Sighet, a town on the border between Hungary and Romania, who, along with a million other Hungarian Jews, was handed over by their own government to the SS to be gassed and cremated or enslaved in the thousands of labor camps across German-occupied Eastern Europe and the homeland that supported the German war industry. Wiesel wrote about his experience at Auschwitz in the memoire Night, a short book that is still widely read today. The reason it is still widely read is because Wiesel found words to evoke what is ultimately indescribable: the psychological horror of abject dehumanization. The Elie Wiesel Center carries on Elie Wiesel’s mission by teaching about Jews and Judaism, the Holocaust and other genocides, and the importance of universal human rights.

Today, Americans are called upon to confront the long shadow of slavery in multiple recent acts of white-on-black police brutality. We are horrified by the murder of George Floyd. We are horrified by the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. And we are horrified by the murder of Breonna Taylor. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends.

I want to say to our students: If I am hopeful for the future, it is because of you. Over the past few days, I have listened to many of our students who made one thing very clear: expressions of empathy and solidarity are good and necessary, but students expect more from us than words.

Our students are deeply conscious of the complexities of race, economic inequality, and the many ways in which systemic injustice manifests on our own campus and elsewhere.  They are also tired of having to explain themselves to others over and over again, including to faculty, advisors, and counselors charged with their well-being. Meanwhile, they have acted. The BU student government and black student association, Umoja, just raised nearly 100k in support of social justice organizations.  http://www.bu.edu/articles/2020/bu-umoja-student-government-raise-100k-social-justice-groups/ Their initial goal was a modest 10k. It was a BU student who organized last Sunday's momentous rally in Boston.

Many of us have joined vigils and marched in protest, despite the raging pandemic. But expressions of solidarity go only so far. Our students expect more of us. Social justice, equity, and inclusion must be more than slogans disseminated in official communiqués. Justice, equity, and inclusion manifest in who occupies positions of power, influence, and trust. It manifests in making sure students see their own skin color reflected in the faces of their faculty, advisors, counselors, and university leadership. Systemic change is painful, as it means relinquishing customary privilege and truly opening oneself to difference. This requires that those of us who take their white privilege for granted pause and listen to the anguished cries of protest and the calm voices of student leaders who are willing and eager to engage. We need these voices, and we need to listen.

Last year, which was a particularly bad year for race relations on the BU campus, we listened to the students and took action when we offered a response to a speech by conservative activist Ben Shapiro that was provocatively titled “America was not built on slavery but on freedom.” (See http://blogs.bu.edu/mzank/2019/11/14/the-ben-shapiro-performance-why-it-was-shameful/) Shapiro’s much-hyped speech, which was accompanied by exaggerated and expensive security measures, was a blatant example of how white power can manifest on a campus that likes to claim the legacies of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr. We need to understand that the first step toward inclusion is to refrain from actions that suffocate the concerns of Black and Brown students. At the time, the University did not even rise to that minimal level of consideration. Though the Elie Wiesel Center decided to do something in response, it was too little and too late. (See http://www.bu.edu/articles/2019/response-to-ben-shapiro/)

A BU graduate student told me, that “sustained thriving of students of color will require an examination of and reckoning with systems of power in the university with the lens of anti-oppression and bias-prevention. Those with the most power must make that commitment in order for any kind of truly welcoming environment to be created.” The Elie Wiesel Center is ready to partner with faculty, students, staff, the Dean of Students and the upper University Administration to do the work necessary to bring about lasting systemic change on campus.

Change requires self-examination. We want to know, and we want to be told what prevents students from feeling included and respected. Starting in the fall, we will offer listening sessions to students, where we listen as students speak. We want our students to be our teachers so we can learn how to be better teachers and mentors to them.

We would love for you to reach out to us with suggestions and ideas.

Michael Zank, PhD
Professor of Religion and Director, EWCJS

by Deni Budman (COM '20)

One of the newest Jewish Studies courses, which is being taught most semesters, is “World Cultures of the Jews” is in many ways unique. It is also highly engaging. The course introduces students to the study of Judaism in its many forms by exploring Jewish communities across the globe today, their different historical origins and cultural contexts, and their strategies of preserving cohesion and transnational solidarity.

Did you know there are vibrant Jewish communities in Ethiopia, China, and Morocco? Well, there are. And the global context of Jewish Studies opens up a new path to understanding religion, culture, and heritage. Have you wondered how race, religion, culture, law, and nationalism shape particular Jewish communities? By taking a look at Jewish histories in diverse environments, this course highlights the wide array of Jewish practices. It even challenges the definition of “Judaism” itself. Meta, right?

Professor Ingrid Anderson, who launched the course this semester, is well-loved by her students for her ability to break down difficult topics and stay clear of bias. She actively engages her students in class discussions, encouraging them to discuss complex ideas confidently, with insight and rigor. 

Evan Brown (COM ‘23), a freshman in the current spring 2020 course, says, “Professor Anderson has done an excellent job at creating a safe space that encourages everyone to participate in our conversations, regardless of their background or views. My peers have been a key part of my experience in class because they have allowed me to see beyond what I was taught in Jewish day school, so I can create my own unbiased opinions. Because everyone in JS100 comes from a completely different upbringing, we all learn and grow from each other.”

Every session in JS100 begins with a student-led conversation. At the beginning of the semester each student chooses a reading that stands out to them on the syllabus and they present it to their colleagues. 

The course also takes advantage of the community outside the classroom. As a part of the class, students form groups to complete community visits with different Jewish communities across the Boston area. This semester, some had planned to volunteer at the annual Cape Verdean Passover seder held at the Hibernian Hall in Roxbury. Students share their experiences with the rest of the class, so they can learn from each other. Other assignments include two brief writing exercises and a research paper.

JS100 is an incredibly popular course. It’s no surprise that it was one of our first classes to fill up this past semester. 

JS100 counts toward the minor in Jewish Studies. The course fulfills a single unit in each of the following BU Hub areas: the Individual in Community, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, Teamwork/Collaboration.

Today is April 15, the day, 75 years ago, when the 11th Armored Division entered the gates of hell that was Bergen-Belsen. If you want to know what it looked like, spend eleven long minutes to listen to BBC correspondent Richard Dimbleby's description from April 19, 1945.

April 15 is what my father-in-law, York University professor emeritus of mathematics and statistics Abe Shenitzer used to call his second birthday. He was among of the 40,000 survivors who greeted the British liberators at the gate of the concentration camp. The attached document attests to his incredible resilience. By July 1945, the British officer, signing the document, attests to Abe's services as an interpreter.

Aside from his love for learning, his wit and humanity, Abe brought with him a fierce devotion to linguistic precision. He went on to become a sought-after translator and editor of books on mathematics and other subjects. He was also a superb teacher.

Born in Warsaw, Abe had grown up and attended Heder, followed by a Hebrew Gymnasium, in Sosnoviec, Poland. In 1943 he was deported to Gross-Rosen (referred to by inmates as the yeshive) from whence prisoners capable of labor were farmed out to the hundreds of labor camps dotting the so-called General Gouvernement, a virtual SS state. He considered himself fortunate that he was placed in a wood-working factory (Hubert Land Werke, Bunzlau) where he worked sawing and planing machines alongside German and other workers, and could forget for hours at a time that he was no longer human. There was starvation, of course. But he rarely spoke of being brutalized, and attributed his survival to the kindness of a few strangers at key moments.

When the Germans began to evacuate the east, moving prisoners westward, Abe's odyssee led him via Nordhausen, Risa, and Ellrich to Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated by the British. This month he turned 99. Twice.

For more on Bergen-Belsen, see the following links:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-liberation-of-bergen-belsen

https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2020/april/15/20200415-75th-anniversary-of-bergen-belsen

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/timeline-of-events/1942-1945/liberation-of-bergen-belsen

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-51234466

Further reading by Boston-area author Bernice Lerner: https://bernicelerner.com/