Trivializing the Shoa
I disagree with almost everything Jared Silverman writes, at least politically. Perhaps that’s because I am a self-described “liberalatarian.” In his Dec. 23 column (“Assimilation and its discontents”), however, Silverman goes beyond the pale. He quotes with seeming approval the following statement from an otherwise unidentified “Orthodox correspondent”: “the most devastating holocaust in all of history by far, is the assimilation of Jews becoming non-Jews.”
Ever since I read that I’ve been trying to get my mind around it. The “most devastating holocaust in all of history by far” is when those born as Jews choose of their own free will to “assimilate,” whatever that exactly means. We may or may not be deeply upset about Jewish assimilation, but the “most devastating holocaust in all of history by far”? Please, as the kids say, give me a break!
We become justifiably outraged when non-Jews trivialize the Holocaust for their own ends, whether political or otherwise. Are we similarly outraged when an “Orthodox correspondent” does the same?
Paul Tractenberg
West Orange
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