It’s a holocaust out there. Thus was the AishYeshiva Aish Hatorah, also known as Aish, is a cult educatio... narrative.
A spiritual holocaust, much worse than any physical one. Because Hitler is taking bodies and Assimilation is taking souls.
And if you take it face value, that’s a fucking convenient narrative to have.
Need me to parent my kids? Sorry, spiritual holocaust.
Need me to be around on weekends? Nope, I’m saving lives.
Need me to treat my employees with respect and not work them into the ground? No can do, it’s a war out there.
That’s right, war is such a good analogy. Because soldiers still need breaks, which is why you still get to spend some time with your family.
It’s also why we sometimes have gala dinners. For the war effort.
But then it’s back to the frontlines; and it’s definitely not in any way an excuse to be a workaholic or to deal with less exciting things in life like changing diapers.
It’s time to invoke the imagery of that diplomat who spent months just signing papers so that the Jews could escape. He locked himself in his hotel room and just ate chocolate and signed. We too lock ourselves in our office and eat chocolate and create seminars.
Except.
What do you do when the holocaust lasts 70 years? How much chocolate do you eat? What if it actually has been lasting for 150 years, since the reform and enlightenment movement? How do you handle a “holocaust” with no perceivable end?
And if it really was a holocaust out there, is that really the time to have a bazillion kids? Maybe you shouldn’t be fucking around and instead should be signing more papers? (and if you say that having more children is a key part of your anti-assimilation war efforts, shouldn’t, like, parenting them be part of that plan?)
And surely there are distinctions?
Is there no difference between actively killing people and the absence of Jewish babies being born because their father married his college sweetheart name Christina?
Could we possibly make a distinction between people being lead at gunpoint to a gas chamber versus someone choosing to not follow a lifestyle that they see as outdated and irrelevant, even if that’s supposedly out of “ignorance”?
I doubt you’re reading this, because you’re still at war. Flailing violently into thin air like a person who’s walked through a cobweb.
But maybe, just maybe, comparing anything in our cushy freedom-filled world to the holocaust is a gross insult to the people who actually died in it, and possibly a fucking convenient excuse for you to do whatever it is you pleased, real-life responsibilities be damned.
