I’m just back from a family vacation that ended with three days of ‘roots’ exploration in Vienna, where four generations on my mother’s side lived in the decades leading to 1938.
This is a thoughtful and, for me, on target, linkage of two human tragedies. Thank you for sharing your family's story and thoughts. I yearn for freedom and safety for both Palestinians and Israelis. Sigh.....
I really admire your willingness to equate the Palestinian’s loss with that of the Jews. It seems to me this question you pose:
Whether some of today’s antisemitism on the left would dissipate if the Israeli government would change its self-destructive course.
depends to a large extent on whether the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere, are seen as the ones who force the Netanyahu govt to change course, or whether it is seen to have been forced on an unwilling population by international powers.
Thank you for sharing your personal story. It is insightful and reflects the pain and trauma of the past and the current sad reality. It highlights the need to acknowledge today's events in the context of our history and the fine line between antisemitism and the legitimate speaking out against policies that further inflame and support violence. You have demonstrated in your thoughtful work and words, how we must not shy away from this middle ground and succumb to the extreme binary positions. Only through mutual respect and recognition of our individual and connected history can we welcome the shared humanity that will move us forward in peace.
Takeaway: Only through mutual respect and recognition of our individual and connected history can we welcome the shared humanity that will move us forward in peace. WELL SAID.
Thank you, Jeremy, again for a very thoughtful and hopeful piece. it's amazing how family stories of American Jews are so similar, whether they came from Vienna or Odessa and Budapest where my family immigrated from. Your segue to Israel, the next chapter of our story, and your heartfelt compassion for the Palestinian story, paralleling ours, is critical. You are right, if we are to secure a homeland that thrives in peace and security, then we must make peace with our neighbors. Palestinians thriving in a land they call their own must also be achieved. Israel has had leaders with vision in the past who understood this, And we, in the Diaspora, must wake up and take an active part. It is unfortunate that there is such resistance in the Jewish community here in America to this truth. It comes from fear. But that can't deter us. Change happens. It just takes vision and courage.
Thanks so much David. I am deeply grateful for your words. Change happens through direct engagement with those who either are disengaged and who we can spark to involvement and through thoughtful dialogue with those who may not see things as we do but are at least open to hearing another perspective. To the extent that you can, please share this piece and your perspectives with as many people in your network as possible.
As I always do, I loved your column on 1938 Vienna - our background in common. But I don't think most (any?) of the "emigrants" (as my mother called herself) or refugees ever longed for Vienna or Austria. I always heard of it as an awful place. My uncle who went to Britain ever after considered himself a proud British citizen. The uncle who went to Colombia, a proud Colombian (as do is descendants, with whom we keep in touch). The Americans immediately were American. The refugee uncle who, post-war, got himself onto the board of an Austrian textile company, did that so he could lord it over the Viennese as an American with American business smarts. No one ever had an ounce of nostalgia - that's what I am writing about. It's different for the Palestinians, it is an attachment to a valued culture, that is connected to the land, more like the value Jews placed on retaining their Jewish affiliation whatever the country
Thanks Evelyn. Really interesting point. My mother for one wanted nothing to do with Austria ever again. She refused to acknowledge that that was where she was born or that she even spoke German (other than when she spoke German to family and friends!). On the other hand, there were many other cousins in the family who did return and there's a thriving Jewish community again in Vienna today that it was heartening to visit. So I think there isn't a simple yes/no on the nostalgia and desire to return... I do think there was a large sense of loss - of a time and a culture that was unique and special.
My grandmother had 3 responses to the question where she was from: Austria, Galicia, and Zurawno, her shtetl. Despite her hatred of Germans for killing her family, she was proud of being “Austrian.” My grandfather too - it’s what he would write on most official U.S. documents as his birthplace, though they were both born on the far Eastern fringe of the Empire. At least my grandmother had in fact lived in Vienna for a couple of years (in Leopoldstaadt, of course). My wife is now based in Vienna for her job as a lawyer with the IFC (World Bank) and I am looking forward to diving into family research there.
As always, Jeremy, I take heart from what you have expressed in this column.
My grandparents and great grandparents came to the United States from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with my maternal grandmother and her family making a stop for some years in England. Perhaps someday I will travel to see eastern Europe but we’ll see….Your story makes me think about it again.
Netanyahu and Co are unethical, hateful people….and the Palestinians who miraculously survive the destruction will be primed to become radicalized, repeating the pattern. I don’t want to minimize the horrors of October 7, but the response of Netanyahu’s government has been unconscionable. I know I am repeating myself and others.
And now there are the added reverberations of what is happening in Gaza here in the States. I am frightened for my children and grandchildren.
Thank you for this story. I could have written this myself, as my family (what is left) is also from Vienna. My parents left in 1938 and ended up in Shanghai, where I was born. But I know nothing of my mother's father and his family. What also struck me how much my thoughts and feelings about Israel/Palestine match yours. Sadly, my own brother is just like Einat Wilf, to the point he even knowing my views differ, enrages him.
How sad that greed, hatred and ignorance arise in this human life and traumatize generations.
Thank you for sharing, Padma. There are amazing records regarding the Jewish community in Vienna. You can - without too much effort - find out where they lived, when they were born, when relatives died (prior to 1938) and where they are buried... I found it incredibly fascinating and comforting to do the research.
Jeremy Ben-Ami has deftly traversed a rather tricky tightrope, or perhaps a rope-bridge, if you will, between European-descended Jews' unbearable sense of loss -and- a beginning of comprehending the losses Palestinian people have suffered. In this effort, Ben-Ami is preceded by poet Marc Kaminsky, in his incredible book, The Stones of Lifta.
P.S. I, too, have roots in Vienna — my father's mother left there about 120 years ago (a few decades prior to the "Night of Broken Glass.")
Thank you for this reflection. Powerful and I hope you will call on us in the community if you face an angry reaction from certain circles. In the end, I find myself more optimistic than you. You remain convinced that the two people cannot ever come together. I believe and have faith in the right of return (not just the right to visit). It is still within our grasp, and we should work to bring it about.
Thanks Howard. So far I'm most moved by the number of people writing both in the comments here and privately to share their stories and the commonalities. I think there are a lot of people who share these perspectives and we are being drowned out and intimidated by loud voices who don't constitute a majority. We need more traction and engagement to win.
On the questions of optimism, I actually think I am optimistic! I think the two peoples can ultimately reconcile and live next to each other - one day even in a potential confederation. But I do believe each people needs a 'homeland' or state they can consider their national home. At this point, I think it requires a degree of optimism to think that's still possible - which I do!
There are peacemakers on both sides of this blood and soil divide nationalists have created to divide people. But I do believe peace is desirable and possible if bibi and company can be removed from power and ordinary Gazans can also rid themselves of their Islamic fanatics and outside players. I have hope.
My grandmother and her older brother left their shtetl in Eastern Galicia as teenagers in the early 1900s and came to Vienna to find work. It launched them into the labor movement, which they continued when they came on to America - the ILGWU and the Waiters Union - before WW I broke out. The rest of the family - 2 siblings, their spouses and children, their mother (my great-grandmother) were murdered by the Nazis when they invaded Soviet occupied Poland in June 1941. The Holocaust has to be taken as a lesson not only to defend ourselves as Jews, but to recognize injustice and the dangers of tyranny and genocide when it happens to others. That's the lesson I have always taken from my family and its history. To support Israel, to push it towards justice, and when we face what is happening in America today - the same. Fight back.
I learned a great lesson in memory and connection when the leader of the Jewish community of Dubrovnik visited my shul. He told us his family, and others, still has the key to their home in Spain from which they were expelled. His words immediately connected, for me, the 2,000 year yearning of Jews for Jerusalem and our failure to understand or empathize with the yearning of Palestinians for what they had lost only a few decades earlier.
Hi Jeremy, it's been many years, and I hope you and Alisa are well. I just wanted to compliment you on your writing here. I appreciate the effort at empathy, moral reasoning, putting yourself into others' shoes, even from a place of tragedy. If more Jewish leaders struck this tone, we'd be in a better place in every way. All the best.
So nice to hear from you, Robert. And I love that it's through comments in SubStack. How very 2020s of us! Let's be in touch directly. Thanks for the kind words.
My wife and I visited Vienna many years ago (1972!) walked Judenplatz, and I went to services at the main synagogue there. It was unsettling on multiple levels, including when a middle-aged man walked over, identified us as jews, and began to apologize for what the nazis did. Something to the effect of his being a soldier in Finland, and how much he admired the Israelis as fighters. But what I really wanted to ask you, was after recognizing Palestinian pain, in particularly the current destruction and brutality in Gaza, what have the Palestinans accomplished since 1948 beyond the PLO, suicide vests, airplane highjackings, missiles and a tunnel system in Gaza, and of course Oct. 7? With the active support of the UN and various arab states, suffering, the nakba, and loss is all they and now Hamas has: rage and the numbers of injured and dead. Jews seem to have been able to make other choices with their considerable pain and suffering. Finally, FYI, the "stolpersteine" is a project created by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 and can be found in other places in Europe. We saw them in the Mitte area in Berlin.
Thanks for the multifaceted comment! If you're up for it, I'd recommend getting back to Vienna. Much remains the same, but much has changed as well.
On the Palestinian question, I have spent the past 2-3 decades getting to know Palestinians - from the political, business, high tech, advocacy arenas and more. Palestinian society is multifaceted and complex - like all societies. There is much to point to from the new city of Rawabi to the high-tech start ups and investment funds that speak to what could be done if the people were free of occupation. One has to see the occupation first hand to understand what Palestinians are up against. It was even worse in Gaza than on the West Bank where I've spent the most time. As one example, even those high school students who won Fulbright and other scholarships to study abroad found it often impossible to get permission to leave Gaza for the first time to complete their studies.
Hamas and terrorists are but a small faction of Palestinian society and when there isn't sufficient economic opportunity and a future, people of all backgrounds will turn to groups fighting for freedom. It's not unique to Palestine that young men with no hope and no prospects get drawn in to violence, terror and gangs. The answer isn't further devastation of their society but creating something - a state - that gives them something to live for rather than a cause to die for.
Yes - the stolpersteine are an incredible project in many countries. Our family has helped ensure their placement at some of our pre-Vienna homes in what is now the Czech Republic.
Thank you for your reply. I have not been to Israel in many years and so cannot question your perceptions and experience. My deep concern about the Palestinian perspective is based on the way they are presented and characterized in the media, or at least the media I look at: the NY Times in particular. Since Oct. 7 the Times has provided a constant barrage of photos of suffering and dead Palestinian children, to the extent that it would appear that the IDF troops are fighting women and children and Hamas is nowhere around. I am an artist who has studied and written about the affect of images for many years, and what the Times and others have done is center the suffering to the extent that there is no history, just the narrative of the Nakba and Gaza, and the ahistorical cries and accusations of "genocide" on college campuses and in the media that perpetuate it. I did not know of Einat Wilf, looked her up, and would probably ask similar questions. In 1948 there was partition and a war and the Israelis won that war against Palestinians and the armies of four arab countries. What would have happened if they had lost? How many Israelis would have been slaughtered and how would the narrative have changed? I would say to be blunt, that this would be true in the present. Maybe college students and others would feel better if there were more dead jews on the ledger. Clearly I am thinking of these things every day in the context of rising anti-semitism and what this might mean for my children and grandchildren. And of Palestinian accomplishment in the present, where is it presented and why has no leadership appeared out of it? A painful and complex discussion all around. Thank you again for your reply.
Today is my 75th Birthday and I am still asking myself that question..." Why do people hate the Jews?" Thank you for this very poignant story and your connecting the experiences of the Jews and the Palestinians.
This is a thoughtful and, for me, on target, linkage of two human tragedies. Thank you for sharing your family's story and thoughts. I yearn for freedom and safety for both Palestinians and Israelis. Sigh.....
And thank you! As I said to David, please share this piece and your perspectives with as many people in your network as possible.
I really admire your willingness to equate the Palestinian’s loss with that of the Jews. It seems to me this question you pose:
Whether some of today’s antisemitism on the left would dissipate if the Israeli government would change its self-destructive course.
depends to a large extent on whether the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere, are seen as the ones who force the Netanyahu govt to change course, or whether it is seen to have been forced on an unwilling population by international powers.
Thank you for sharing your personal story. It is insightful and reflects the pain and trauma of the past and the current sad reality. It highlights the need to acknowledge today's events in the context of our history and the fine line between antisemitism and the legitimate speaking out against policies that further inflame and support violence. You have demonstrated in your thoughtful work and words, how we must not shy away from this middle ground and succumb to the extreme binary positions. Only through mutual respect and recognition of our individual and connected history can we welcome the shared humanity that will move us forward in peace.
Takeaway: Only through mutual respect and recognition of our individual and connected history can we welcome the shared humanity that will move us forward in peace. WELL SAID.
At age 6 in the Hudson back seat I asked Dad “Why do people hate the Jews?”
“That’s a stupid question” my Dad said.
“No!” Mom shouted. “You just don’t know how to explain.” Since then I have always appreciated attempts to explain. My visit to
my grandparents home villages in the Ukraine was a rich source. As is this reflection and articulation of yours, Jeremy!
Thanks so much, Eric. All the best, Jeremy
Thank you, Jeremy, again for a very thoughtful and hopeful piece. it's amazing how family stories of American Jews are so similar, whether they came from Vienna or Odessa and Budapest where my family immigrated from. Your segue to Israel, the next chapter of our story, and your heartfelt compassion for the Palestinian story, paralleling ours, is critical. You are right, if we are to secure a homeland that thrives in peace and security, then we must make peace with our neighbors. Palestinians thriving in a land they call their own must also be achieved. Israel has had leaders with vision in the past who understood this, And we, in the Diaspora, must wake up and take an active part. It is unfortunate that there is such resistance in the Jewish community here in America to this truth. It comes from fear. But that can't deter us. Change happens. It just takes vision and courage.
Thanks so much David. I am deeply grateful for your words. Change happens through direct engagement with those who either are disengaged and who we can spark to involvement and through thoughtful dialogue with those who may not see things as we do but are at least open to hearing another perspective. To the extent that you can, please share this piece and your perspectives with as many people in your network as possible.
As I always do, I loved your column on 1938 Vienna - our background in common. But I don't think most (any?) of the "emigrants" (as my mother called herself) or refugees ever longed for Vienna or Austria. I always heard of it as an awful place. My uncle who went to Britain ever after considered himself a proud British citizen. The uncle who went to Colombia, a proud Colombian (as do is descendants, with whom we keep in touch). The Americans immediately were American. The refugee uncle who, post-war, got himself onto the board of an Austrian textile company, did that so he could lord it over the Viennese as an American with American business smarts. No one ever had an ounce of nostalgia - that's what I am writing about. It's different for the Palestinians, it is an attachment to a valued culture, that is connected to the land, more like the value Jews placed on retaining their Jewish affiliation whatever the country
Thanks Evelyn. Really interesting point. My mother for one wanted nothing to do with Austria ever again. She refused to acknowledge that that was where she was born or that she even spoke German (other than when she spoke German to family and friends!). On the other hand, there were many other cousins in the family who did return and there's a thriving Jewish community again in Vienna today that it was heartening to visit. So I think there isn't a simple yes/no on the nostalgia and desire to return... I do think there was a large sense of loss - of a time and a culture that was unique and special.
My grandmother had 3 responses to the question where she was from: Austria, Galicia, and Zurawno, her shtetl. Despite her hatred of Germans for killing her family, she was proud of being “Austrian.” My grandfather too - it’s what he would write on most official U.S. documents as his birthplace, though they were both born on the far Eastern fringe of the Empire. At least my grandmother had in fact lived in Vienna for a couple of years (in Leopoldstaadt, of course). My wife is now based in Vienna for her job as a lawyer with the IFC (World Bank) and I am looking forward to diving into family research there.
As always, Jeremy, I take heart from what you have expressed in this column.
My grandparents and great grandparents came to the United States from Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, with my maternal grandmother and her family making a stop for some years in England. Perhaps someday I will travel to see eastern Europe but we’ll see….Your story makes me think about it again.
Netanyahu and Co are unethical, hateful people….and the Palestinians who miraculously survive the destruction will be primed to become radicalized, repeating the pattern. I don’t want to minimize the horrors of October 7, but the response of Netanyahu’s government has been unconscionable. I know I am repeating myself and others.
And now there are the added reverberations of what is happening in Gaza here in the States. I am frightened for my children and grandchildren.
Thank you for this story. I could have written this myself, as my family (what is left) is also from Vienna. My parents left in 1938 and ended up in Shanghai, where I was born. But I know nothing of my mother's father and his family. What also struck me how much my thoughts and feelings about Israel/Palestine match yours. Sadly, my own brother is just like Einat Wilf, to the point he even knowing my views differ, enrages him.
How sad that greed, hatred and ignorance arise in this human life and traumatize generations.
Thank you for your work.
Thank you for sharing, Padma. There are amazing records regarding the Jewish community in Vienna. You can - without too much effort - find out where they lived, when they were born, when relatives died (prior to 1938) and where they are buried... I found it incredibly fascinating and comforting to do the research.
Jeremy Ben-Ami has deftly traversed a rather tricky tightrope, or perhaps a rope-bridge, if you will, between European-descended Jews' unbearable sense of loss -and- a beginning of comprehending the losses Palestinian people have suffered. In this effort, Ben-Ami is preceded by poet Marc Kaminsky, in his incredible book, The Stones of Lifta.
P.S. I, too, have roots in Vienna — my father's mother left there about 120 years ago (a few decades prior to the "Night of Broken Glass.")
Dear Jeremy,
Thank you for this reflection. Powerful and I hope you will call on us in the community if you face an angry reaction from certain circles. In the end, I find myself more optimistic than you. You remain convinced that the two people cannot ever come together. I believe and have faith in the right of return (not just the right to visit). It is still within our grasp, and we should work to bring it about.
Howard Horowitz
New Rochelle, NY 10804
Thanks Howard. So far I'm most moved by the number of people writing both in the comments here and privately to share their stories and the commonalities. I think there are a lot of people who share these perspectives and we are being drowned out and intimidated by loud voices who don't constitute a majority. We need more traction and engagement to win.
On the questions of optimism, I actually think I am optimistic! I think the two peoples can ultimately reconcile and live next to each other - one day even in a potential confederation. But I do believe each people needs a 'homeland' or state they can consider their national home. At this point, I think it requires a degree of optimism to think that's still possible - which I do!
There are peacemakers on both sides of this blood and soil divide nationalists have created to divide people. But I do believe peace is desirable and possible if bibi and company can be removed from power and ordinary Gazans can also rid themselves of their Islamic fanatics and outside players. I have hope.
a brilliant, moving analysis of historical losses, of Jews and of Palestinians
My grandmother and her older brother left their shtetl in Eastern Galicia as teenagers in the early 1900s and came to Vienna to find work. It launched them into the labor movement, which they continued when they came on to America - the ILGWU and the Waiters Union - before WW I broke out. The rest of the family - 2 siblings, their spouses and children, their mother (my great-grandmother) were murdered by the Nazis when they invaded Soviet occupied Poland in June 1941. The Holocaust has to be taken as a lesson not only to defend ourselves as Jews, but to recognize injustice and the dangers of tyranny and genocide when it happens to others. That's the lesson I have always taken from my family and its history. To support Israel, to push it towards justice, and when we face what is happening in America today - the same. Fight back.
I learned a great lesson in memory and connection when the leader of the Jewish community of Dubrovnik visited my shul. He told us his family, and others, still has the key to their home in Spain from which they were expelled. His words immediately connected, for me, the 2,000 year yearning of Jews for Jerusalem and our failure to understand or empathize with the yearning of Palestinians for what they had lost only a few decades earlier.
beatiful, Debby. Thank you.
Hi Jeremy, it's been many years, and I hope you and Alisa are well. I just wanted to compliment you on your writing here. I appreciate the effort at empathy, moral reasoning, putting yourself into others' shoes, even from a place of tragedy. If more Jewish leaders struck this tone, we'd be in a better place in every way. All the best.
So nice to hear from you, Robert. And I love that it's through comments in SubStack. How very 2020s of us! Let's be in touch directly. Thanks for the kind words.
My wife and I visited Vienna many years ago (1972!) walked Judenplatz, and I went to services at the main synagogue there. It was unsettling on multiple levels, including when a middle-aged man walked over, identified us as jews, and began to apologize for what the nazis did. Something to the effect of his being a soldier in Finland, and how much he admired the Israelis as fighters. But what I really wanted to ask you, was after recognizing Palestinian pain, in particularly the current destruction and brutality in Gaza, what have the Palestinans accomplished since 1948 beyond the PLO, suicide vests, airplane highjackings, missiles and a tunnel system in Gaza, and of course Oct. 7? With the active support of the UN and various arab states, suffering, the nakba, and loss is all they and now Hamas has: rage and the numbers of injured and dead. Jews seem to have been able to make other choices with their considerable pain and suffering. Finally, FYI, the "stolpersteine" is a project created by German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992 and can be found in other places in Europe. We saw them in the Mitte area in Berlin.
Thanks for the multifaceted comment! If you're up for it, I'd recommend getting back to Vienna. Much remains the same, but much has changed as well.
On the Palestinian question, I have spent the past 2-3 decades getting to know Palestinians - from the political, business, high tech, advocacy arenas and more. Palestinian society is multifaceted and complex - like all societies. There is much to point to from the new city of Rawabi to the high-tech start ups and investment funds that speak to what could be done if the people were free of occupation. One has to see the occupation first hand to understand what Palestinians are up against. It was even worse in Gaza than on the West Bank where I've spent the most time. As one example, even those high school students who won Fulbright and other scholarships to study abroad found it often impossible to get permission to leave Gaza for the first time to complete their studies.
Hamas and terrorists are but a small faction of Palestinian society and when there isn't sufficient economic opportunity and a future, people of all backgrounds will turn to groups fighting for freedom. It's not unique to Palestine that young men with no hope and no prospects get drawn in to violence, terror and gangs. The answer isn't further devastation of their society but creating something - a state - that gives them something to live for rather than a cause to die for.
Yes - the stolpersteine are an incredible project in many countries. Our family has helped ensure their placement at some of our pre-Vienna homes in what is now the Czech Republic.
Thank you for your reply. I have not been to Israel in many years and so cannot question your perceptions and experience. My deep concern about the Palestinian perspective is based on the way they are presented and characterized in the media, or at least the media I look at: the NY Times in particular. Since Oct. 7 the Times has provided a constant barrage of photos of suffering and dead Palestinian children, to the extent that it would appear that the IDF troops are fighting women and children and Hamas is nowhere around. I am an artist who has studied and written about the affect of images for many years, and what the Times and others have done is center the suffering to the extent that there is no history, just the narrative of the Nakba and Gaza, and the ahistorical cries and accusations of "genocide" on college campuses and in the media that perpetuate it. I did not know of Einat Wilf, looked her up, and would probably ask similar questions. In 1948 there was partition and a war and the Israelis won that war against Palestinians and the armies of four arab countries. What would have happened if they had lost? How many Israelis would have been slaughtered and how would the narrative have changed? I would say to be blunt, that this would be true in the present. Maybe college students and others would feel better if there were more dead jews on the ledger. Clearly I am thinking of these things every day in the context of rising anti-semitism and what this might mean for my children and grandchildren. And of Palestinian accomplishment in the present, where is it presented and why has no leadership appeared out of it? A painful and complex discussion all around. Thank you again for your reply.
Today is my 75th Birthday and I am still asking myself that question..." Why do people hate the Jews?" Thank you for this very poignant story and your connecting the experiences of the Jews and the Palestinians.
Thanks for sharing.