קאווע שטיבל

מר. קלונימוס האט געשריבן:א גענסייד אין א לאנד און לענדער איז נישט אינגאנצן דומה צו א גענאסייד אויף א רעליגיעזע גרופ

רביה''ק זי''ע האט געשריבן:דארפסט נישט לויפן ביז די ארמעניער, וויפיל חרדישע אידן ווייסן אז רוב מענטשן וואס זענען גע'הרג'ט געווארן אין די האלאקאסט זענען בכלל נישט געווען קיין אידן? ביז איך האב עס געלערנט אין קאלעדש האב איך אויך נישט געוואוסט... דא האט איר א בערך'דיגע ליסטע. (באמת איז אנגענומען אז די צאל ציגיינער איז געוועהן איבער א מילליאן.)

רביה''ק זי''ע האט געשריבן:דארפסט נישט לויפן ביז די ארמעניער, וויפיל חרדישע אידן ווייסן אז רוב מענטשן וואס זענען גע'הרג'ט געווארן אין די האלאקאסט זענען בכלל נישט געווען קיין אידן? ביז איך האב עס געלערנט אין קאלעדש האב איך אויך נישט געוואוסט... דא האט איר א בערך'דיגע ליסטע. (באמת איז אנגענומען אז די צאל ציגיינער איז געוועהן איבער א מילליאן.)

But there was a greater danger: It turned out the depravities of the Internet were the least of our problems. My close friend, Miriam, a mother of eight in Lakewood, discovered this the hard way, after the Internet had left its mark deep on her daughter’s vulnerable brain

What happened was this: Chani, Miriam’s 16-year-old daughter, was writing a report on the Holocaust, and Miriam, putting the little ones to sleep, gave Chani permission to search online. The teenager typed in the word “genocide,” and there in front of her eyes was a Wikipedia entry with phrases like “Rwandan genocide,” and “Armenian genocide.” So Chani, knowing there’d been only one genocide, the Holocaust, Googled the word again, and a few frustrated clicks later she found that the Internet’s mistake was even greater than she realized; now there was something called the Sudanese genocide, too. And when she clicked on it, photos appeared, taken days earlier, that showed Sudan’s genocide up close. Up very close

Chani’s mother knew something was wrong as soon as she came downstairs. Only an hour had passed, but she knew a terrible thing had happened when she found her daughter hunched over the computer screen, staring at emaciated children, some with limbs hacked off, others lying still on the ground, large eyes staring blankly at the lens. Miriam knew she’d made a horrible mistake in allowing Chani to go online when she saw tears streaming down her daughter’s face, tears that were not for Jews

Miriam immediately shut off the computer, but Chani had gone into shock. When Miriam wasn’t looking, she searched obsessively for the genocides of the past century: Sudan, Rwanda, Armenia, Serbia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Guinea. Miriam realized this only two weeks later, when she checked the browser history. But by then Chani had questions, questions about God, misery and the stunning discovery that Jews, after all, held no monopoly on suffering

It was a betrayal devastating to her faith. Up until that evening, Chani had known with certainty that only Jews really suffered, because we are the chosen people. The rest of the jealous planet, therefore, wanted to destroy us because they hated our morality

But now, others suffered horribly, too. So, were they, too, chosen? And if not, then was suffering indiscriminate, random, thrown on innocents by God? The agony she had seen could not be a punishment for hurting the Jews, because the Sudanese toddlers had never hurt the Jews. In fact, the Germans, who nearly exterminated the Jews, suffered no such fate, and were indeed doing better than ever

It was a traumatizing ordeal for a devout Jewish mother, watching the daughter she’d lovingly raised to care only for her own show the same compassion for others

Eventually Miriam had had enough. She wanted her daughter back. She wanted the pious Chani who cared deeply but for the right folks, who had a generous heart but clear priorities. She wanted the girl for whom the world ended where her knowledge did, and who did not care about what she was not supposed to know. The computer had done a terrible thing: It had allowed her child to encounter humanity up close, eye to suffering eye, and in the deceiving light of that reality, it was impossible to properly tell the superior from the inferior. Agony looked the same everywhere

Miriam tried explaining it. It wasn’t that others didn’t suffer, she said, but that we suffered more, and for better reasons. They because of sin, we because we were chosen