May 9, 2008 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago? JWisdom: Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky May 8, 2008 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+ Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War Steven Plaut: How ‘nakba’ proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation JWisdom: Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher May 7, 2008 Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises JWisdom: My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler May 6, 2008 Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60 The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights May 5, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective May 2, 2008 Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas JWisdom: Parent trap? May 1, 2008 David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis April 30, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 29, 2008 Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood Joel Brinkley: On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable April 28, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time? Steven Emerson: New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron April 25, 2008 Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time Rabbi Berel Wein: The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III April 24, 2008 Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II April 23, 2008 Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen April 22, 2008 Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters Caroline B. Glick: Obama the Savior April 18, 2008 Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 17, 2008 Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition? JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron April 16, 2008 Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 15, 2008 Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go! Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken April 14, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games! JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D. April 11, 2008 Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles JWisdom: Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 10, 2008 Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East The Kosher Gourmet By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies April 9, 2008 Michael Feldberg: An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 8, 2008 Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken April 7, 2008 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree? Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D. April 4, 2008 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky April 3, 2008 Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier! JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher April 2, 2008 Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith Jonathan Tobin: Unreasonable Accommodations JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans March 22, 2007 J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !) Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 15, 2005 /4 Adar II, 5765 Israel's new Holocaust museum taps writings, artworks for insight By Joel Greenberg Pictures of Jews killed in the Holocaust at one of the sections of the newly-constructed Holocaust memorial museum, Yad Vashem. Today an international delegation will attend its inauguration JewishWorldReview.com | ERUSALEM — Near the entrance to Israel's new Holocaust History Museum, a collection of snapshots, some with charred edges, is displayed against the backdrop of a grisly scene: the partly burned bodies of Jews killed by the Nazis and local collaborators in Estonia in September 1944. The snapshots, found in the pockets of the victims, show images of a vanished world — family photos, soccer teams lined up for a group picture, people at the beach. The display underscores the declared mission of the new museum, to tell the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of the Jewish victims, using objects they left behind, their writing and artwork to narrate the events. The museum is to be formally inaugurated today in the presence of Israeli and foreign dignitaries, including United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The event promises to be an assertion of what Israel sees as its leading role in international Holocaust commemoration. A $40 million, decade-long project, the museum is the centerpiece of an ambitious expansion of Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, a 45-acre campus of monuments and museums on a pine-clad mountain on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The new museum, a concrete, prism-shaped structure that bores through the mountain, was designed by internationally known architect Moshe Safdie. The structure is part of a complex that also includes a Holocaust art museum, a study center, a synagogue and a new Hall of Names, housing the retrieved names and biographical details of Jewish victims. In contrast with the current Yad Vashem historical museum, which is more than 30 years old and whose exhibits consist mainly of black-and-white photos and texts, the new museum is a multimedia experience. It uses drawings, diaries and letters by the victims, personal belongings, video testimonies of survivors, video art and reconstruction of scenes from the period to convey a vivid sense of the events. Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem and chief curator of the new museum, said it was designed to use new technologies to inform a new generation of visitors, accommodate more people and present the Holocaust in a more personal way. "We wanted a museum that will tell the history of the Holocaust while balancing between knowledge, experience and emotion, which together is the essence of a good museum," Shalev said. The idea is to "give the victims a face and a name, to tell their personal stories, so the victims are looking at us eye-to-eye," he added. "We want to build up empathy and identification, a personal dialogue with the subject." There are 90 personal stories told through the exhibits. In one room there is a postcard thrown from a train by Ester Frankel, a French Jew killed in the Auschwitz death camp, in which she pleads to see her 2-year-old son, Richard, who was left behind. In another hall are the braids of a 12-year-old Romanian Jewish girl, Lili Hirsch, cut by her mother and left with neighbors for safekeeping before deportation. Other exhibits show personal possessions of the victims: a pile of shoes, bits of necklaces, rings and watches. In one area a typical living room of a German Jewish home is re-created, its comfortable interior reflecting a sense of well-being that contrasts sharply with scenes visible through a window: streets filled with Nazi flags and signs calling for a boycott of Jewish businesses. There also is a re-creation of a street from the Warsaw Ghetto, complete with original cobblestones, street lamps and tram tracks brought from Poland. In another room there are original prisoner bunks from the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps. Large panels display excerpts from letters and diaries. "My only child was taken away for work yesterday," an excerpt on one panel says. "I don't know where they took him. Only G-d knows what I'm going through." Yehudit Inbar, director of the museums division at Yad Vashem and curator-in-charge at the new museum, said a major challenge facing her team was to overcome the alienated approach to the victims in Nazi photos and films, which form the bulk of the visual documentation of the Holocaust. "The German pictures showed the Jews as an object of brutalization or murder, as if they were members of a tribe of savages," Inbar said. "We tried to find out who these people were, where they came from, what did they do before the war. Suddenly they come to life, they looked entirely different, as if you have given them an identity." The prominent display of artwork by victims and some color photos are meant to offset traditional black-and-white images of the Holocaust, Inbar said. "When you ask people to close their eyes and think of the Holocaust, most see it in black and white, and when you see it that way, you can dismiss it as something from another time, another culture, another planet that has nothing to do with us," Inbar said. "But the Holocaust was in color, and when you show it that way, it suddenly brings it very close to us. It happened in our civilization, not long ago. It makes it relevant." While Yad Vashem officials say the museum was built to meet new needs, some critics have suggested that its real purpose is to assert Israel's primacy in Holocaust commemoration after the opening of similar museums abroad, most prominent among them the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. "I see it as a statement by the state of Israel that the largest Holocaust museum cannot be in Washington or Berlin, but only in Jerusalem, and it expresses the feeling that Israel has a monopoly on the Holocaust, and this is important in order to emphasize the Zionist lessons of the Holocaust," said Tom Segev, an Israeli journalist and historian. "In recent years the Holocaust has become a universal code for evil, but ... we are holding on to the Holocaust as if it is only ours and teaches us that we need a state, and the state has to be strong, and we have to be strong. This museum is an attempt to reclaim the Holocaust for ourselves after it slipped a bit from our hands." Shalev, the Yad Vashem chairman, said the new museum consciously focuses on Jewish victims and tells their particular story, "which is the way it should be done in Jerusalem." But he asserted that telling the Jewish story was the most effective way to convey broader lessons about the meaning of the Holocaust for humanity at large. "I do believe that only a very particular story can convey a universal message," he said. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. To comment, please click here. © 2005, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.