GenZedong

When I was at Tishʻa Bʼav service a few hours ago, the Rabbi made no mention of the pogroms of 1917–1923 (but did mention the 1929 Hebron massacre as well as the Oct. 7th incident). When I asked him after the service why he omitted these events, he justified it on the grounds that mentioning every anti-Jewish atrocity would have taken too long. I then said that that era was very significant, and he brushed it aside saying that Tishʻa Bʼav is mostly about the destruction of the Temple anyway. (Although the service spent only a little time on the Temple.)

I know that asking for some recognition of the Palestinians—beyond mentioning the ‘Arabs’ behind the Hebron massacre—would have been an ‘outrageous’ demand, but I would have at least expected the clergy to mention the largest anti-Jewish massacre before the 1940s. I sent the Rabbi an email about the subject, but as I was rushing I carelessly left in the part where I wrote, ‘While most Herzlians insist that the Shoah was so unique that it was incomparable to anything else in history, it would be utterly baffling if they explicitly included this catastrophe as something else incomparable to the Shoah, which is possibly another reason that they almost never discuss it.’ If he ever reads that email then I get the feeling that he is not going to take that comment lightly; it would be so typical for me if I received an extreme reaction.

I can’t say that I was satisfied with the service, but oh well; it wasn’t for me. If it makes somebody sleep easier at night, good for them.

ETA: The Rabbi replied to my email with this:

Thank you for sharing. I am not sure I would call it a photo-shoah, but it was certainly part of the larger history of anti-Jewish violence in Europe. And you are right, it deserves more attention.

I’m surprised that he overlooked my potshot. Maybe he was unsure how to interpret the word ‘Herzlian’.