Jews, Christians and Auschwitz
It is very disconcerting to me that Roth, a Christian professor, chooses to use the classic distortion of the Jewish concept of “chosenness” in his column.
For 2,000 years this conscious betrayal and other skewed ideas have been used to justify the torture and wholesale murder of a powerless, oppressed minority.
The world has progressed somewhat in its civilizing humanity, particularly here in the United States, and today a Jew can respond to this publicly without fear of attack. I feel I have a responsibility to do so.
The “chosenness” of the Jew is a two-way contract. We were “chosen” to live by the tenets and the wishes of God, and we “chose” to accept that responsibility and live according to the Hallachah (path) of these extraordinary and sometimes difficult directives, to make holy the mundane and to keep sacred that which will continue to humanize mankind and to be “a light unto the nations.”
God knows we have tried and will try in the time to come--but, of course, we must first be allowed to stay alive in dignity and self-respect!
RACHEL SIMKIN
Santa Monica
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