A big, small story: the synagogue of Aalten

Aalten is a small municipality and village in the east of the Netherlands that extends to the German border.

It is a charming area with well-kept houses and plenty of walking and cycle paths. People still greet strangers there.

Not all Jews in the Netherlands lived in the big cities. There were small groups living throughout the country.

Jews first arrived in Aalten and the neighbouring village of Bredevoort in the 17^th century.

In 1850 a small synagogue was built on the main street of Aalten.

In 1930, an estimated 70 Jews lived in the village. After Hitler’s rise to power, their number was augmented with German Jewish refugees.

During World War II, 51 of Aalten's 85 Jews were hidden by local non-Jews, and thereby survived the war.

The hidden Jews were supported by money collected from the congregation of the local Dutch Reformed church.

Religious books and ritual objects of the synagogue were hidden by the local population for the duration of the war. The building itself was ransacked.

The village had proportionally the highest number of people in hiding during World War II. At one point, Aalten hid 2,500 Aalten Jews, German Jews and non-Jews, amidst its population of 13,000.

After the war, most of the Jewish survivors left; too few remained to keep up the synagogue. For decades nothing was done with the building.

In the early 1980s there were discussions in the municipality about selling the building.

This led to an initiative by a small group of Aalteners to restore the synagogue and use it for Jewish services and as a memorial for their murdered Jewish neighbours.

The group established a foundation called, “Friends of the Aalten synagogue”.

And here begins my connection to the story. One of the initiators was the father of my son-in-law.

The initiative was successful. Contributions came from the congregation of the local Dutch Reformed church and the municipality and province.

In 1986, the synagogue was again consecrated and it started its new life as a house for both religious and cultural functions.

In December, 2000, during the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the synagogue, a plaque bearing the names of the Jews of Aalten who were murdered in the Holocaust was unveiled on the wall of the synagogue.

A new Torah scroll, written in Israel by Joseph Giat, was dedicated in 2005. As less than ten Jews now live in Aalten, the scroll is mainly used in the larger municipality of Enschede.

Mark My Words

I like to predict the future.

Actually I am pretty good at it. When I lived in the Negev, most of my weather forecasts were correct.

My attention is now focused on the follow-up to the excesses of MeToo. I do not mean the exposure of the misuse of power for sex.

I am referring to the sexual McCarthyism.

Historically speaking, hatred, bigotry and the dumbing-down of public discourse are an inherent part of American culture.

However, the specific context for these activities is subject to change.  

I predict a central role for Valerie Solanas in the follow-up to the excesses of MeToo. I know she is dead, but I see her as a symbol for the future.

Not because she tried to murder Andy Warhol fifty years ago. Nobody cares about that now.
There are five other reasons that make me think she will appeal to a future generation of gullible, hysterical cretins.

·       She was a trailblazer in foul-mouthing.  In her time it was not usual for women to use variations of “fuck” in every sentence. She did, and in that sense can be considered quite modern.

·       She suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia. A true victim of patriarchy.

·       She started an organization called SCUM in 1967, an acronym for Society for Cutting Up Men.

In her SCUM manifesto she calls for the elimination of all men.

Well, why not if they are the cause of all evil?

·       She was obnoxious and obsessive. A bit like Linda Sarsour.

In 1968 she was sentenced to three years in the New York State Prison for Women for trying to murder Warhol. After her release in 1971, she stalked Warhol and others over the phone.

This led to her being arrested again. After this release, she was institutionalized several times before she faded out of the public eye.
A true victim of institutional misogyny and paternalism.

·       She was openly lesbian in a time that it was not acceptable.

More than that, she challenged the idea that gender is binary, as well as the accepted norms of sexuality and performative gender. This makes her acceptable to the queer community.

I see a future coalition of the followers of Valerie Solanas and the growing army of transgenders.

Of course I cannot see all the details in my crystal ball.

For example, I cannot see if all male foetuses will be aborted in the womb or if some men will be kept on sperm farms.

Getting back to the Negev.

I predict sun for tomorrow.

In a world of psychic epidemics, a stolen kiss is a capital crime.

“Jewish continuity” in the US means perpetuating Jewish identity from generation to generation.

The leading academic proponent of this continuity is the prominent Jewish sociologist, Steven M. Cohen.

Some Jews on the extreme-left in the US object to Jewish continuity.

Elianna Yolkut is a New York-based freelance rabbi, a gay "rabbi without borders". 

In Haaretz she wrote that the "Jewish community is obsessed with statistics, and continuously talks of the relationship between numbers and Jewish continuity." 

According to her, this was wrong.

Instead, she argued, the community should concentrate on the "powerful messages Judaism can bring to the world, and to Jewish community; message of love and responsibility, of hope and possibility, of compassion and commitment."

Eliana Yolkut is not worried about the size of the Jewish community, for her Judaism is only an aesthetic collection of beliefs. She calls this "Jewish wisdom". 

Therefore, anybody can be a "Jew", if they are liberal and feminist and agree with her platitude-ridden interpretation of Judaism. 

Stephen M. Cohen has been professionally assassinated by MeToo. 

The New York Jewish Week found eight women who complained of sexual misconduct by him over a period of three decades.

They accused him of inappropriately making passes at the wrong women.

Cohen's downfall differs from other MeToo downfalls because some of the women who accused him also oppose his work. 

They are now taking the opportunity to intellectually stone him by trashing his professional achievements.

There was a political struggle between Cohen and a colleague, Keren Mcginity. 

Cohen wrote about the importance of in-marriage, Jews marrying Jews, for "Jewish continuity".
McGinity is a proponent of intermarriage. She objects to "descent" being the determining factor for deciding who is a Jew.

After Cohen's shaming, she commented that "Cohen’s departure from the field will create space for more people to do the same work, opening the door to different perspectives and methods."

However, McGinity was also his most vocal accuser of sexual misconduct. 

That is an amazing coincidence.

Some women on the extreme-left go farther. These ultra-universalists and postmodernist fanatics maintain that in-marriage and the whole idea of Jewish continuity is racist, sexist, patriarchal and misogynist.

Kate Rosenblatt, Ronit Stahl, and Lila Corwin Berman wrote the following in The Forward: 

"Most troubling about the data-driven mode of Jewish continuity conversations are its patriarchal, misogynistic, and anachronist assumptions about what is good for the Jews."

Rokhl Kafrissen writing in The Forward (where else?) maintains that the "sexism" of the alleged abuse cannot be separated from "the patriarchal agenda Cohen spent decades pushing.” 

How “surprised can we be,” she wondered, “that a man whose entire worldview hinged on women having more babies turned out to have no respect for women when it came to personal sexual boundaries?”

Cohen and McGinity were on a date. She said he, "wrapped his arms around me, pressed his body against mine, and forcefully kissed my neck...".
McGinity and her ultra-universalist and postmodernist supporters vilified him for that. 

Now they are trying to vilify the idea of Jewish continuity.

And Cohen then, what about his future?
It is goodbye Mr. Cohen. In a world of psychic epidemics, a stolen kiss is a capital crime.

The new anti-Semitism

When does criticism of Zionism and Israel morph into anti-Semitism?
Actually it is quite simple.
Zionism is the belief that Jews are a people and have a right to self-determination in the land they originally came from.
It is part of the identity of the overwhelming majority of Jews.
When you vilify or demonize this right to self-determination, you are an anti-Semite.

A few concrete examples to illustrate this "new" antisemitism in practice.

First example.
British forces liberated the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in April, 1945. There is a well-known BBC radio report from Richard Dimbelby on the immediate aftermath of the liberation. 

There is also a lesser-known radio report from Patrick Gordon Walker.
He reported that 5 days after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, a Jewish chaplain held an eve of the Sabbath service.
Amidst the thousands of corpses that were still lying in the open and the walking dead, those who could, started to sing. 

They sang “Hatikvah” (The Hope).
The theme of this song reflects the Jews' 2,000-year-old hope of returning to the Land of Israel, restoring it, and reclaiming it as a sovereign nation.
“Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

If you call this hope of the Bergen-Belsen survivors colonial, imperialist, fascist or racist, you are an anti-Semite.
If you compare this hope of the Bergen-Belsen survivors to Nazism, you are an anti-Semite.

Second example.
“If Not Now, When?” is the title of a book written by Primo Levi, an Italian survivor of Auschwitz.
In his book, Levi tells the story of a group of Jewish partisans behind German lines during the Holocaust. They seek to survive and continue their fight against the Nazis.

They have a dream that motivates them; the dream of reaching Palestine and taking part in the development of a Jewish national home.
The novel won both the Premio Campiello and the Premio Viareggio.

If you call this dream of the Jewish partisans colonial, imperialist, fascist or racist, you are an anti-Semite.
If you compare this dream of the Jewish partisans to Nazism, you are an anti-Semite.

Maria

1968.
The kibbutz only accepted groups of Swiss volunteers.

The Swiss were polite, hard workers, did not smoke pot and could often play an instrument, which was a bonus for the kibbutz orchestra.
Strange that, a Marxist-Zionist kibbutz being enamored with the most bourgeois of bourgeois volunteers.

Maria was a shy and demure Swiss volunteer.
She used to stare at me a lot. It was a sad and forlorn look, a bit unnerving.
I started talking to her and we hit it off. My friends noticed we were spending time together, and ribbed me about her name.

One thing led to another, but she had demons she was battling.
After a time she told me about them.

A few years earlier she had worked as an au-pair in Rabat, Morocco.
One day she missed her stop on the bus to her host family and had to walk back a stop, past a park.
Two men grabbed her, pulled her into the park and raped her.

Eventually we did start a relationship. It was the kind you start not knowing where it is heading.
Actually, it turned into a mainly passionate physical relationship that lasted for about two months. Then she returned to Switzerland.

We were not really suited for each other. She used to try to entice me with stories about how she could make delicious cheese fondue.

I am not too keen on cheese fondue, I am a meat person.

She returned nine months later, hoping to renew the relationship. However, I was with another girl.
She was very civilized about it. We shook hands. The Swiss are good at keeping up appearances.

The Zionist in me

I have met American and British Jews who downplay antisemitism by saying, “It could never happen here”.
I have never met any Dutch Jews who say that. They know it could happen here and anywhere.

Over half of the Dutch victims of the Second World War were Jews.
In the run up to Remembrance Day in the Netherlands there are usually some programmes about Dutch Jews.
I remember listening to a radio programme where four Jewish women, children of Holocaust survivors, were being interviewed. 

The interviewer asked the women if the Holocaust still had an effect on their daily lives.

One woman replied that before she could make a new friend, she always asked herself if that person would have hidden her during the war.
I remember thinking to myself, “she can’t have many friends”.

“Never again” implies there could be other attempts to annihilate the Jewish people. 

However, next time we will not be beholden to others, we will not ask anybody to hide us.
We will rely on ourselves

I do not give a faecal matter

There were many political differences in my unit.

However, when push came to shove we trusted each other completely.

We had to, our survival depended on it.

Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of the Forward, has never had to worry about survival. She is a liberal Democrat who lives in New York.

She has never really had to fight for anything.

Wrote an article, "Should We Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of The Six Day War — Or Despair?". 
It sounded like she was sorry we won.

During a lull in the fighting, someone turned on a transistor radio. He tuned it to a Syrian station in Hebrew. They were boasting about how they were going to exterminate all the Jews.

We knew why we were fighting.

Women and children on my border kibbutz were not evacuated. Where could they go?

This was an existential war. We won and the people of Israel survived.

And I don't give a s**t about what Jane Eisner and her friends think.