This session was taken up with the Holocaust. We watched the chapter "Genocide" from the British series "The World at War" and for a consideration of the possibility of reconciliation I played a short piece from NPR's Sunday Morning Edition.  This was a story about the 50th anniversary of the treaty between Germany and France and the visit to Goettingen by Barbara, a celebrated French Jewish singer. She hid during the war and survived. She accepted an invitation to visit Goettingen with much trepidation. But the warm reception and her realization that a new generation of German's was growing up touched her. She wrote a song about Goettingen that became a huge best-seller in both France and Germany.
     I think the kids were stunned by the movie. There was silence after it ended and they had no enthusiasm to go immediately for bagels (which is what they usually want to do after the first hour of class). So we talked a bit about the movie and I played the NPR segment. It was hard to get a discussion going. I provided some details about the decision to exterminate the Jews and tried to convey to them that the Final Solution was not just another pogrom, it was something new and horrible. It was the first time that a definition of being a Jew turned on blood, racial inheritance that could not be altered by any personal actions or choices. I also told them that a number of important Nazis were tried and executed for war crimes by the Allies. When we turned to a discussion of reconciliation and healing, again discussion was difficult. No one, I think, had much interest in forgiveness, which is perfectly understandable. On the other hand I think some may have found it difficult to express themselves on this profound issue. I brought up the analogy of South Africa once Nelson Mandela came to power, but they didn't know much about it.
     I don't want to spend that much time on the Holocaust. I think it has been enormously over emphasized, as if the Jews had only a twelve year history and we were defined by the Nazi attempt to exterminate us. We will return to some of this when we get to the history of modern Israel for the Holocaust plays a crucial role in the international decision to allow a Jewish state. The Holocaust is, in my opinion, something that has to percolate for there to be understand.
     Next week we'll return to the preparations for the B'nai Mitzvah celebration.

     Our blogging has fallen behind. Let me tell you what we did last Sunday (January 27th).  In addition to having the B'nai Mitzvah-nics present their Bible stories and get some suggestions --  in general they all need to flesh out the stories and add some a) interpretation to the story and b) explain what it means to them.  We'll provide a few suggestions for the former and you can help them find just what they want to say about the latter.
     We watched a video of the 2009 B'nai Mitzvah ceremony to give the kids a visual taste of what their own celebration would be like. I don't think they had previously seen themselves, in imagination, up on the stage presenting their work to the community. It was very useful to see the video.
     The class decided to do their social action project as a group and focused on the issue of gun violence.  This has a lot of interesting aspects and we are beginning to find out 1) which organizations/groups, locally and nationally, are concerned with gun violence so the project will not just be the kids sending a letter to their senator. We will be able, perhaps, to link up with one of the anti-gun groups; 2) find out the extent of gun violence, i.e. the number of shooting in schools and the number of shootings of children especially every year; 3) we talked about the possibility of introducing the discussion in their own schools in the wake of Sandy Hook, but no decision was taken; 4) one of the kids is also going to find out about the NRA and what arguments are advanced in favor of owning guns, including assault weapons and what is the current status of the anti-assault weapons law that was allowed to expire a few years ago.
     Although much of this will be done in class by the entire group, you might want to get involved in this critical issue.  A classroom suggestion is for us to watch the movie Bowling for Columbine. None of the kids knew much about this first of the school shootings and none of them had seen the movie. This would be a good opportunity for the parents to get involved with us. I'll write you separately about seeing the movie.