Hitler's Shabbes

By Binyamin L. Jolkovsky

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THERE IS A PICTURE in the August 8 New York Times showing several members of Shalom, a Jewish youth group. Dressed in t-shirts with large magen Dovids -- Stars of David -- and holding Israeli flags and placards with original slogans like "NO MORE NAZISM," they were among 1,426 police officers and hundreds of other counter-protesters who lined the streets near the White House to send a message to the American Nationalist Party, a k a the Knights of Freedom, a self-styled neo-Nazi group, who amid controversy won the right to hold a free-speech hate march.

The fact that the would-be revolutionaries never materialized might be considered a win for those who spent their day in the humid Washington heat. But, if memory serves, a similar tactic was used by different neo-Nazis years ago when a much younger, and virtually unknown, Jewish lawyer named Alan Dershowitz fought for their right to march in suburban Chicago. The town, Skokie, was, and still is, populated by many Holocaust survivors. Following the incident, Mr. Dershowitz became a media celeb. And those heroic Nazis, well, they received the international media coverage they so craved. Their story was even made into a movie-of-the-week.

This time, local media, as well Jewish weeklies, were carrying stories about this "watershed" event for weeks, though not nearly as aggressively.

But what is troubling, truly troubling, about Saturday's event is not the fact that neo-Nazis, even ones with parents named Hyman and Peggy Greenbaum, as is the case with the "leader" of the group that said it would march, exist. Or even that they actually had the chutzpah to want to parade before the White House. (When has the world ever been free of anti-Semites?) What is truly troubling is that for many Jews, it takes this sort of exercise and others whose center is darkness, to animate their "Jewishness."

Every year, on Shavous, which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai, there is a rally on Brooklyn's Kings Highway for increased Sabbath observance. Has there ever been one occasion when cars and busses arrived -- before, after, or during the holiday --- filled with passionate Jews from across the country attempting to show their allegiance with their co-religionists over the beauty of one Judaism's Fundamentals of Faith? How many non-Orthodox Jews even bothered to try to procure tickets to the once-in-seven-and-a-half-years Siyum haShas ceremony, celebrating the completion of a rigorous Talmud study schedule and an immediate beginning of the next, that was beamed around the world via satellite, and nearly filled to capacity, two of New York's largest arenas?

I, for one, am sorry, truly sorry, that I didn't have the ability to speak with the Shalom youth group. But I have an excuse. A pretty good one, too. You see, I was home with my family and guests sitting around our Shabbes table. Saturday, after all, is the Jewish Sabbath --- whether the neo-Nazis decided to show, or not.

The Holocaust was more than a physical war against a people. Hitler, according to his writings, also wanted to destroy Judaism and its spiritual gifts to the world. Among his goals was annihilation of the very concept of Sabbath, of "holy time."

My question to members of the Shalom youth group and other Jews present at the rally against his ideological progeny: Did Hitler succeed?