Inexpressible, Expressible
Whether culmination or aberration of history, the Holocaust transcends history. Everything about it inspires fear and leads to despair. The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of…
Tag: Holocaust
The Political Economy of Memory
Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide I read this book for my treatment of Wiesel and it gave me plenty of perspectives, arguments and insights. The question of the…
A Feat of Reading and Writing
1. [T]he sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses, the more one must conclude that for…
The Way It Looked in 1996
The main intellectual task is to confront the Israeli conscience with the serious human and political claims of the Palestinians: these require moral, intellectual, cultural attention of the most profound kind, and cannot easily be…
Lessons
The lesson of the Holocaust is the facility with which most people, put into a situation that does not contain a good choice, or renders such a good choice very costly, argue themselves away from…
An Option for “Unworthy Victims”
On Norman G. Finkelstein, The Rise and Fall of Palestine: A Personal Account of the Intifada Year First published in the National Catholic Reporter, fall 1997 Some years back, the political critics Noam Chomsky and…
“Every Man Should Have His war”
One of the best books I’ve ever read is by Gloria Emerson, Winners and Losers: Battles, Retreats, Gains, Losses and Ruins from a Long War. A major themes in the book is how the Vietnam War affected Americans (or…
Remembering the Dead/2
Dear Shimmelstoy I was moved by what you mentioned about Joel His is a private commemoration Which for some reason reminds me of Yankev Glatshteyn (If you haven’t read him yet, get’s Fein’s translation In…
On Segev’s The 7th Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust
The following is a short summary and commonplace passages with comments on Tom Segev’s book, The 7th Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. It’s one of the many books I examined when writing my first…
Deploying the Holocaust
Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, by Idith Zertal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cambridge Middle East Studies 21. 208 pages. Biographies to p. 216. Glossary to p. 222. Bibliography to p. 230. Index…