Before talking so much about how children in kindergarten should be taught about the Holocaust, it might be worth asking how adults understand it.
Two trends dominate Holocaust Remembrance Day, Independence Day, and other national holidays that have been renewed in the State of Israel in the last generation.
One phenomenon is an escape to issues on the margins of this day instead of directly engaging with it and its content. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, this is expressed in the concern for Holocaust survivors who are suffering from economic hardship. This is an important issue to address on other days, but why dedicate this day to it? Isn't this an easy escape from the more difficult, ethical, and meaningful content that the extermination of a third of the Jewish people raises?
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Sometimes it seems that the Israeli bureaucracy and the Ministry of Finance are the reason for commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, and not the Nazi regime. Even the Minister of Pensions, Uri Auerbach, who is in charge of those survivors, announced on Holocaust Remembrance Day that he was uncomfortable with the fact that it had become a day to commemorate the economic rights of Holocaust survivors. Independence Day, at the same time, is becoming a barbecue day, because why bother filling the day on which a Jewish state was established after two thousand years of exile with content?
The second growing trend these days is the obsessive preoccupation with those who don't mark the date. Again, perhaps out of insecurity or perhaps because we have no idea what to fill those precious hours with, we embark on a hunt for those who dare not mourn or rejoice, not to be exactly like everyone else. Wouldn't it be a shame to waste Holocaust Remembrance Day chasing after those who have a barbecue in Sacer Park, and Independence Day raging after those who dare not have a barbecue?
Wednesday, 12 noon, "Feuerstein Institute" in Jerusalem. Prof. Reuven Feuerstein, who until a few days ago came here every morning anew to fix the world, is wrapped in a tallit in the entrance plaza and surrounded by hundreds of people. Feuerstein, 93, was a respected professor of educational psychology, who founded an institution to promote learning ability and treated tens of thousands. This funeral of the founder of the place is also watched from the windows of the building. More and more faces of children with Down syndrome peek from inside at the unusual event, we hear his brother, Shmuel, say about him: "He ignited in all parents and all children a spark of hope, of optimism. That it is possible to change, that we must develop, that no child should be given up. People thought there was nothing in them, but he believed in them.".
A French newspaper once wrote that "Feuerstein does not let the chromosomes have the last word." At the funeral, they mention how proud he was of this quote, which summed up his method, for which he also received the Israel Prize: not to surrender to heredity, but to try and advance each one.
His son Aharon explained it this way: "You loved the patients, but you explained that loving is not about accepting unconditionally, but about fighting. Love is war. I will fight with you and make it difficult for you so that you can move forward. To the one who sent our Sabbath, you brought children with unbearable problems. You insisted that they make kiddush and you waited patiently, and we, as children, also learned to wait ten minutes for each of them until he read the kiddush text from beginning to end. An autistic girl who never looked directly at anyone met you and after one meeting gave her mother a kiss for the first time in her life. Because after all the learned theories you developed, the basis was to look first into the child's eyes.".
An Air Force plane flies over us, during rehearsals for Independence Day, just as Chief Education Officer, Brigadier General Avner Paz Tzuk, is eulogizing and thanking Prof. Feuerstein for changing the face of the IDF, both in treating soldiers from special populations and in rehabilitating IDF wounded soldiers. One of them, Aharon Krav, stands in the audience. He is considered the most seriously wounded in Operation Cast Lead. A young man who left his wedding for the battlefield to command his soldiers and returned from there in critical condition with a severe head injury.
""In rehabilitation, they always talked about my need to get back to eating, walking, and dressing," a close friend tells me. "Professor Feuerstein talked to me about the mind, and only about it. When I first came to him, he asked what the hardest part of the Gemara I had learned was. I told him, and he informed me: Within a year, you will finish this entire tractate. Then he asked if I knew English, and I said not well enough, and he announced that I would know English by the end of the year. I worked hard. Only today do I realize how damaged my brain was and how much I owe him.".
Between the death and the funeral, the institute received letters of condolence from Australia, Britain, and Denmark. This is probably just the beginning. The method is being implemented in 40 countries, including an Indian village and a refugee camp in Rwanda.
But some of the patients, it turns out, were also family members. "25 years ago," says his son, Rabbi Rafi Feuerstein, in a cracked voice, "you came to your students at the university and opened the lesson and said: 'I deserve Mazal Tov, I have a grandson with Down syndrome.' This is our son, Elhanan. We experienced the power of your method with him firsthand." Elhanan himself later steps up to the microphone and says: "My grandfather encouraged me and now my heart is crying because my grandfather is not with me.".
Rabbi Rafi concludes: "Your will is clear and we will say it here to you: to fight for the fact that every person has an ability that needs to be discovered and then realized. You are probably needed up there now, to make some diagnoses.".
This week's Torah portion, "Amor," tells, among other things, about the counting of the Omer, which we are currently in the midst of. There are 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, and it is customary to count them in the evening prayer, day after day. Many commentators explain that it is necessary to develop and go through some process between the Exodus from Egypt on Passover and the reception of the Torah on Shavuot. In other words, we must count the time that has passed in order to gradually develop in us patience and anticipation. The "Book of Education" states that the counting of the Omer should "show in our souls the great desire for the honorable day longed for in our hearts.".
This week I received proof of this from my three-year-old son, a commentator. Last year, he brought from daycare a detailed Omer counting board and a pack of stickers to stick on each day, with an accompanying explanation from the kindergarten teacher about the children's wait for Shavuot. Last year, he stuck on all the stickers at once, on the same day. Well, obviously. It's hard to resist. This year – for two weeks now – he's managed to wait and put on one sticker each day. Apparently, this process really requires maturity and basic patience.
Jewish status:""The mind is shaped by the spirit and that has meaning." A great man can choose the structure of his thinking. and his personality. Traditional psychology opposed this, but I fought to prove that man is changeable, and that the brain can be changed in almost any situation and age" (Prof. Reuven Feuerstein, late)
• Sivan Rahav Meir's column is published in Yedioth Ahronoth
