My father. A hero who awoke at night screaming abput what he had seen in Buchenwald. Click the image to read more about the fight to preserve his heritage from the efforts on my brother and sister to destroy it.
Today is the third day of Passover. Yesterday we celebrated our first seder at 9AM in Seattle, sharing it with our children who live in Oslo at their time for a second seder!
The Haggadah we use is unique, written by my wife, my children and myself over the four decasdes since the assassination of Dr. King, our Haggadah memorializes the Jewish story of freedom .. from our origins in the sotry of Moses to the modern fight for survival with our Palestrina brothers and sisters.
The quote below is a new addition to our Haggadah. Moseh Sneh says all to well what my father taught. Robert had seen hell in Buchenwald and came home to threats of death from our antisemitic neighbors. His view, however was not that of either the victim or the assimilated Jew. He was a very proud Jew. My father was proud of our family heritage and of the unique heritage of our people…our success in science , our contributions to culture, but especially our role in the celebration of freedom not just for us but for all peoples.
“Every Jew who remained alive knows and feels that he is alive only by chance – either because he was outside the Third Reich or because there wasn’t enough time to put him into a gas chamber and furnace.…To come to this people now and advise them: ‘Assimilate please, forget that you are Jews, free yourself from your Jewishness so that you will be free’—can anything more cynical and cruel be imagined?” -Moshe Sneh, Israeli Communist Party, MK.