Posted on 05/30/2006 9:33:27 PM PDT by darkangel82
April 25, the 27th of Nissan, was Yom Hashoah, the day to remember (zachor) the millions who perished in the Holocaust. In Israel, every year on that day at 10 a.m. sirens wail throughout the land. Everything stops, including businesses and public transportation. Everyone in Israel stands in total silence for at least two minutes. Silence, in traditional Judaism, is the most heartfelt way to commiserate with those who mourn, at least until the mourner himself wants the silence broken.
In the Diaspora, Yom Hashoah is observed in various ways, primarily by the Jewish community – but not commonly with a period of silence. It should be. And it ought to apply to everyone, Jewish or not. I have always thought that a bell tolling and two minutes of silence would be a great and solemn thing for our town once a year. I don’t see it as a church/state issue at all, and it would have particular meaning in the public schools. But as far as I know, it was business as usual in our town and in our schools.
Now, here is a contrast: The following day, April 26, was indeed a Day of Silence, splashed all over the front page of the newspaper. It was observed reverentially, indeed zealously, in our high school, and I daresay in yours, too. So, what then is this Day of Silence?
It is an annual quasi-religious ritual, to some extent run by students, but Command Central is headquartered at GLSEN, our old friends the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. GLSEN choreographs the whole show: months of planning, selling T-shirts, distributing materials, handling publicity, writing letters to local businesses, soliciting donations, printing letters for the students to use, and much else.
GLSEN describes the Day of Silence on their Web site thus: “Participants take a day-long vow of silence [note the theological echo] and distribute or wear speaking cards with information about anti-LGBT bias and ways for students and others to ‘end the silence’… The Day of Silence is designed to draw attention to the bullying and harassment faced by LGBT students everywhere … The Day of Silence is an effort that can raise awareness on this issue, prompting people to talk and think about it.”
Unfortunately, the only people prompted to talk and think were GLSEN acolytes and sympathizers. Groups like PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) and JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) were blocked, as were parents and others who tried to distribute materials with differing outlooks. Some were roughly escorted outside, and students who wore stickers protesting the official GLSEN rainbow stickers were bullied and harassed. Indeed, last year a student with an opposition sticker was knocked to the ground and hurt while her teacher looked on.
If homosexual activists truly cared about student “safety,” they would support school policies that “ban harassment or violence against ANY student for ANY reason, period,” as David Miller of the Citizens for Community Values quite sensibly says. No one who cares about our young people, he continues, “can remain silent while homosexual activists use our public schools to promote behavior that puts students at dramatically higher risk of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, life-threatening disease and premature death by as much as 20 years.”
Miller goes on to argue: “Any public school official who allows young people to be taught at school that such behavior is normal, positive, or harmless is not only negligent but reckless and should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Sounds right to me – if for no other reason than that the most flagrant bullying is done, with impunity, not by parents, but by the grand inquisitors of GLSEN and their co-religionists — for it is a religion, and imperiling the health of our young people by order of their catechism is akin to an auto-da-fe.
Does that sound like name-calling? Well, GLSEN is getting ready to make me good and sorry. They are planning a No Name-Calling Week for January 2007. Aimed primarily at grades five through eight, the program can be tailored to older and younger kids, they say. I repeat: An entire week. The week will be chock-full of “educational activities aimed at ending name-calling of all kinds [I wonder if that includes “homophobe” and “bigot”] and providing schools with the tools and inspiration to launch an on-going dialogue about ways to eliminate bullying in their communities.”
Is it any wonder that more and more parents are opting for home-schooling their kids? Think what they could accomplish with a whole day of silence! And a week of dialogue? It boggles the mind.
Janet Tassel, a writer in Lexington, is a contributing editor at Harvard Magazine.
ping
ping?
Groups like PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays) and JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) were blocked, as were parents and others who tried to distribute materials with differing outlooks. Some were roughly escorted outside, and students who wore stickers protesting the official GLSEN rainbow stickers were bullied and harassed. Indeed, last year a student with an opposition sticker was knocked to the ground and hurt while her teacher looked on.
Dialogue should win over silence
- & win over one-sided Leftist Propaganda
Thanks for the ping, although I don't think it worked(like everything else today....stupid storms)
FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel/Russian Jewry ping list.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
See this essay on the subject.
Well, Tisha B'Av is the day for mourning the destruction of both Temples, along with all of the tragedies that have happened to the Jewish people, but there are other (now sadly neglected) fast days commemorating specific tragedies: 20 Sivan, for example, is a day of mourning for the massacres of Chmielniczki in 1648-1649. So there is no reason why the Holocaust should not also have its own specific day apart from Tisha B'Av.
There are still communities who fast on 20 Sivan and whose prayerbooks contain the appropriate prayers (though I've never seen one myself).
As I understand it, the Gedolim have ruled that Churban 'Europa' is to be commemorated on Tish`ah Be'Av. There's also a halakhah against fasting or mourning during the month of Nisan.
People who lost relatives whose date of death is unknown are supposed to recite Qaddish for them on `Aseret BeTevet, but that doesn't seem to be widely observed.
Have a happy, holy, and kosher Shavu`ot, Alouette!!!
Make some village put a monument to the Ten Commandments on its courthouse lawn . . . you know, to celebrate diversity and demonstrate to the world that those Notzerim don't run this country! ;-)
Chag sameach to you!
I made the most amazing blintzes and cheesecake!
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