On Columbus day and Thanksgiving, I often discuss the ambivalent nature of these holidays. Both represent the opening of the Americas to European colonization. This led both to the creation of opportunities that would not have been there otherwise. The example I always use is the fact that had the US not been founded, my family would undoubtedly been killed in Europe during the waves of anti-Semitic violence between 1900 and 1945. The events celebrated by Columbus Day and Thanksgiving day unquestionably saved my family. Of course those same events led to the extermination of many Native American families as well. Hence the ambivalent nature of these holidays.

Among the articles I have written on this subject are:

All we take for granted has been built on genocide

Columbus Day Through the Eyes of Native American Democrats

Columbus Day

And on a related note: America Before Columbus: 1421 and 1491

This year I have some different thoughts on Columbus Day, ones that link directly to the saving of families persecuted in Europe. What gets ignored in the celebrations of Columbus Day (which either are overtly pro-colonialism and/or oddly a reflection of Italian Nationalism) is the interesting story of Columbus himself and his family.  read more »

Rush Limbaugh loves to call Obama a Nazi. To me this shows either Rush has no concept of history or he is deliberately lying, because there is NO RESEMBLANCE between Obama's policies and Nazism. I seriously think Rush needs to read the classic history The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

The National Jewish Democratic Council is sick and tired of Rush's ignorance and/or deliberate deception and are demanding that Rush stop his irresponsible Nazi rhetoric. From the NJDC:

Rush Limbaugh has engaged in some wild right-wing antics over the years. But yesterday he compared President Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Hitler and today his website has the logo of the president's health insurance reform plan morphing into a Nazi graphic replete with Swastikas.  read more »

There is a room 8 diarist of the name "Chaim Yankel" who has a beef with a city council candidate named Brad Lander. Yankel (actually a name that runs through my family as a first or middle name, though I used the more modern form "Jacob" for my son) wrote an article on room 8 about an anti-Israel statement made by Mr. Lander in a book which compiled the views of anti-Israel Jews. Yankel was pretty harshly criticizing Brad Lander, and I came, mildly, to Brad's defense. I made the following comment to Yankel's original article:  read more »

One of my annual diaries (when I remember to do them) is honoring the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during WW II, which happened to coincide with Hitler's birthday in 1943. I happen to feel that it was a particularly good birthday present for Hitler: the defeat of his elite force by a bunch of half starved, barely armed Jews. In 1943, it also coincided with Passover. This year the anniversaries don't coincide quite so well as they did last year, but they are still close and still significant.

I can think of no better expression of the Passover tradition than the Warsaw uprising against Nazi Germany. My appreciation for this is heightened by the fact that I am currently in the middle of the book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Though I am only in 1942 so far, I find my knowledge of the history of the period is greatly enhanced and my appreciation of the 1943 Warsaw uprising even greater.  read more »

Every year at Passover I write a diary focused on the origins of Jews. This is largely what I wrote last year, including a discussion of threads of evidence that influences from Egypt were part of the origin of Judaism, just like the Passover story goes.

Passover celebrates, supposedly, the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This escape is considered one of the defining moments in Judaism, perhaps THE defining moment. Into this event is placed the entirety of the ancient Jewish identity, supposedly divided into "12 tribes," as well as the defining of Jewish religious law. That is a lot to put into one holiday! But there is a more general theme, that of the struggle for freedom that many cultures can relate to.  read more »