Below The Fold

I don’t exactly know where to start on this. I know I have to say something about it. I know I can’t ignore it.

We tried that once.

My anger is palpable. It clouds my vision when I think about it. I get a headache that starts behind my temples and throbs for hours at a time. My jaw clenches so hard it aches.

When I was a child, I read Maus by Art Spiegelman. Although I had also read the Diary of Anne Frank and Joseph and Me and a dozen or so books about the holocaust, I don’t think any of them quite hit me the way Maus did. Maus captured not only the story of a survivor, but the reverberations that echoed throughout that survivor’s family to latter generations.

The holocaust is as central a driving theme to every Jew alive today as is the Exodus story, or his Bar-Miztvah or Purim or Chanukah. For better or for worse, it’s very much a piece of who we are now. It’s a facet of our identity as a people.

Last September, I penned an entry about the death of Simon Wiesenthal. In it, I quoted another piece about Reb Zalman, to illustrate the mindset of so many of the Jews who perished in the holocaust. That mindset is gone today. We aren’t victims any longer.

Never Again.

**UPDATE**
added May 31
More news on this. Apparently, there is some confusion as to whether or not this law was actually passed; the Iranian government denies its enactment, as do many others in and out of Iran. It has been attempted in the past, however, so hopefully this press will continue to keep it from becoming writ.