Dear Hartman Foundations for a Thoughtful Judaism cohort bet (two),
Thank you for the insightful class on Monday. I am following up with two matters:
Our next class is rescheduled for January 30 (instead of the 23rd), as always 5:45-7:30PM. Please mark your calendars now. We will be covering the topic of the Ethics of Rebuke. Additional materials to follow.
At our last class, we did not get to discuss the article about the Ken Burns documentary. I hope you will take the time to read this piece about it if you have not yet. Below are some thoughts, questions, and an excerpt.
UNIT 2 INTERPERSONAL ETHICS ● Bystander Effect - Jan 9, 2023 ● Ethics of Rebuke - Jan 30, 2023
UNIT 3 MAKING MORAL CHOICES ● The Moral Imperative Approach - Feb 13, 2023 ● The Moral Concern Approach - March 13, 2023 ● Managing Tensions + Conclusion - March 27, 2023
FINAL LEARNING CELEBRATION ● Friday, May 26, 6-8:30PM Shabbat-Shavuot Services + Dinner + Shavuot Learning with JCOGS participants of Foundations for a Thoughtful Judaism
The new Ken Burns documentary about America and the Holocaust speaks directly to the question of the ethical responsibilities of bystanders. This is a great summary and analysis if you haven’t seen it yet.
It’s not entirely comfortable to sit with America’s response to the unfolding tragedy in Europe, not only when we consider the American Jewish community, but when we consider the narrative of American exceptionalism that is inextricably bound up with the American Jewish story. This is a complex case where it may be hard for biblical texts to speak to our contemporary realities. Are Bystander Ethics only relevant to individuals when they find a lost object? Or, is there such a thing as social and political Bystander Ethics that implicate members of a said society. This has deep implications today when it comes to geopolitics and, closer to home, violence and social ills in various parts of America. We know so much because of social media and technology. Does this turn us into bystanders?
An excerpt from the New Yorker article cited above – “This new documentary lays bare how the United States government was mired by domestic politics during the war and how the American public was largely indifferent to the Holocaust at the time. It sets that indifference against a homegrown tradition of racism, tracing the xenophobia of the nineteen-twenties right up to the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, in 2017, and the January 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. If Holocaust memory seems well established today, the film nevertheless arrives at a moment when the nature—and the future—of historical truth, about the Holocaust but also about everything else, is in acute jeopardy.
