Vulgar boors

That does it! It's bad enough that some holier-than-thou boors have decided
that I need to be told how to be a responsible Jew. That for the past few
days I've been receiving a flood of emails that are supposed to be about
Czernowitz history and genealogy but that turn out to have nothing to do
with the subject. But now I receive an email from some jerk who has decided
that people who object to the list being highjacked should "go screw
yourselves". Why don't you go away and talk to people who want to
outcompete themselves for zealot of the year award? Leave us alone.

Well, somehow I doubt you're going to go away, and the list owner is
letting this get entirely out of hand. It's ugly, and it's vulgar.

So, please take my name OFF the list. I've had it.

And, for your information, I'm proud of my work defending Israel in the
media. I've worked long and hard at it. I don't need "reminders" about what
I should be doing. I shudder to think of the damage you might be causing
with your boorish behavior. I can only hope that you behave better - less
arrogantly - when you address the general public or heaven help us all.

John Hoenig

>Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 13:26:48 -0500
>X-PH: V4.1_at_mailhub2
>From: AJTheatre_at_aol.com
>To: CZERNOWITZ-L_at_cornell.edu
>Subject: Brilliantly written letter
>X-Mailer: Atlas Mailer 2.0
>X-AOL-IP: 207.237.198.6
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by elist02.mail.cornell.edu id
>i1AJkuPL014275
>Reply-To: AJTheatre_at_aol.com
>Sender: owner-CZERNOWITZ-L_at_cornell.edu
>
>Hi, my name is Stanley Brechner, and I joined this group about a year ago
>after exploring my roots on both sides of my father's family who came from
>Sadagura. And I have kept mainly silent, as most, while opening countless
>e-mails about this lost family and this lost heritage and, of course,
>gravestones, always gravestones.
>However, at the same time, I work in the arts and have been actively
>producing a documentary on the Holocaust from the perspective of religion:
>the old religion of Christianity and the new religion of Communism (those
>Jews who 'converted' to Communism and sat by silently as Pope Stalin signed
>a treaty with Hitler in 1939). At the same time, while it was never the
>original focus of the film and is itself for me enormously unappetizing, it
>also became about the relative apathy of Jews around the world on behalf of
>their Romanian, Bukovinian and Galician co-religionists (among many others),
>meaning the very same people we are all so assidiously trying to 'connect'
>to. This inactivity, unfortunately, was particularly strong by the American
>Jews, of which I am one. Some Americans were 'irked' at being forced into
>the spotlight and worried that protests on behalf of European Jews would
>result in 'American antisemitism.' Others simply felt those Jews 'over
>there' were all Bolshevi!
> ks and had made their own bed. Some, like the editors of the NY Times, were
>appalled at the idea that Jews were Zionists and talked openly about a
>Jewish state, a ridiculous notion because: why should Jews 'stand out' or
>'particularize.' It embarassed them and didn't fit 'the program.' The result
>is, as some Nazis testified to at the Nuremburg trials, they were completely
>surprised at how easy it was to demonize, deport and murder 6 million,
>including close to 1 million Jewish children, thousands of whom came from
>Czernowitz and its environs. While Romania lost about 1/2 of its Jews, the
>Bukovina area was 'particularly' devastated.
>And that comes to my point. Here we are a group that spends time talking
>about gravestones, yet some are 'irked' about talking about an Israel under
>siege. It doesn't fit their political agenda while interested in
>'connecting' with the past of Bukovina. Some are 'irked' about talking about
>the same antisemitism that is at the heart why many search for a heritage
>taken from us. Czernowitz cemeteries where gravestones and ancestors cannot
>be found because many of these ancestors aren't even buried. I find it
>extraordinary appalling.
>My grandparents and great-grandparents were forced to flee Sadagura with
>nothing on their backs in 1889 after living in the area for three hundred
>years, working as craftsmen. They were the victims of a slew of virulent
>antisemitic laws passed between 1869 and 1880 as well as pogroms. I am here
>to talk about it because, by chance, they fled to America while many others
>could not. That is the essence of my connection to Sadagura and this group,
>not some gravestone. The gravestones are living history, a living testament
>to the past and the future.
>To those 'irked' at Lucca's e-mail and attachment (which aside from its
>content is brilliantly written), let me say as delicately as I can: go screw
>yourselves. Bravo to you Lucca! On to more gravestone lists.
>Best, Stanley Brechner
>
>
Received on 2004-02-10 16:35:25