In the sixth grade, I was already labeled a slow learner. I wanted so badly to be like the smartest, most popular girl in my class. One day, I saw the smartest girl reading a thick, impressive book. I thought, If I can’t be like her, at least I can read what she’s reading. That thought changed my life. It set something in motion that continues to shape me to this day.
The book was “Exodus” by Leon Uris. I had never heard of it, but I picked it up and began to read. It was about the Holocaust. At the time, I knew almost nothing about what had happened to the Jews in Europe — nothing about Zionism, nothing about the founding of Israel.
As I read, I was shocked. I didn’t want to believe what I was reading. Hundreds of thousands of children – millions — were murdered. Among them were thousands of adolescent girls just like me. They were killed with a level of brutality, callousness and cruelty I couldn’t comprehend. Many were forced to dig their own graves, strip naked, and then were shot. Their bodies were thrown into pits alongside their families and the population of their entire village.
I didn’t believe it at first. I thought, if I had been there, I would’ve told the SS officer I wasn’t feeling well. Maybe he would’ve sent me to safety in a hospital. I was too innocent to understand that there was no escape.
After reading “Exodus” and by the time I flunked out of high school, I had read every book about the fate of the European Jews in the White Plains Library. In 1967, right after the Six-Day War, I traveled to Israel for the first time. Upon disembarking from the El Al plane, I was ecstatic. I literally kissed the ground.
After I got married, bought a home, and decided to settle permanently here, I began teaching dance and yoga. Three women from a neighboring town attended my class. When the session ended and everyone was lying in Savasana (corpse pose), I noticed Saba Wineappel with a row of six numbers tattooed on her forearm.
From my reading, I knew that some tattooists had carved those numbers deeply and cruelly, while others inscribed them more delicately — perhaps with a trace of compassion. Saba’s tattoo was the latter. Thank God, I thought.
I never imagined I would live to see the day when the memory of the Holocaust might be used in ways that support political agendas –especially policies toward Palestinians that have resulted in immense suffering, deaths and starvations that many around the world now view as violations of human rights.
Could I have predicted how my friend, who had taught me so much about the plight of Black Americans and encouraged me to read books on slavery, would react so coldly when I showed her a particularly affecting documentary about the Holocaust? I asked her, “Do you understand now what Jews went through during World War Two?” Her only response was, “Six million Jews died, but nine million slaves were killed.” I didn’t know it was a competition.
Now we are living in a virtual cesspool of identity politics, coming from both the right and the left, full of contradictions and hypocrisy. I have lived to see the day when there are Holocaust deniers — as though Saba and millions of others carved up their own arms. The Holocaust, wrongly, is often referred to almost exclusively as “the six million,” when in reality nine million souls perished.
It was a tie, I could tell my friend.
When the concept of cultural appropriation is relevant only when white people borrow from the traditional cultures of non-whites, I wonder where the accusation of cultural appropriation is now, when non-Jews break a glass at the end of their weddings, often without any knowledge of its meaning or of the sacredness of the custom.
We talk about racism, but leave out colorism. We talk about anti-semitism, but rarely acknowledge the rhinoplasty and name changes popular during my lifetime. We champion the #MeToo movement, but often ignore the global scale of women’s oppression.
Recently, I read a memoir written by a woman from a primarily Islamic country. She asks: “Why aren’t white Western feminists out in the streets protesting for my freedom as well?” In her country, if a woman is seen in public without a burka she can be beaten, jailed, or even executed. Underage girls are married to older men. Honor killings still occur.
In discussions of slavery, we often overlook the fact that there were a small number of Black slave owners in the South who opposed slavery in principle, just as there were some Jews who opposed immigration policies that could have saved many Jewish lives. The right calls itself the “law and order” party, yet it completely ignores the political violence that occurred during the insurrection, which resulted in deaths and injuries on January 6, 2021.
If all this noise and hypocrisy were distilled down to its most basic common denominator, it would simply be a distortion of the famous quote from the Talmud, with only the first sentence remaining: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” — while the second part, which states “If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” is conveniently ignored.
Of course, honesty requires me to acknowledge a basic contradiction in myself.
My daughter sent me a picture with the message: “Hi, mom, I did a double take — this girl looks exactly like you.” The photo was of Beba Gomelskaya, murdered at the age of 28 during one of the thousands of mass killings that occurred during the Shoah, the Hebrew name for the Holocaust.
Did I feel a special kinship with her? I did. I thought the same thought I had in sixth grade, 68 years ago: It could have been me.
We must begin our journey of compassion by caring first for ourselves, then for our families, our identities, our communities, our towns, our states, our regions, our countries — expanding outward, further and further, to include the planet and beyond.
Free your pain from the claustrophobic boundaries of yourself.
“If not now, when?” Now more than ever.
Join the family! 
