Shas could have been a crucial element of any possible coalition, had it retained 13 seats in the new Knesset. With the final tally dropping Shas to 12 and bringing Meretz up to 5, it is possible that Olmert can form a coalition without them. Certainly Olmert has no overwhelming need to bring United Torah Judaism into the government as well.

For its part, UTJ may be just as happy to have Shas carry the ball on negotiations over child allowances (though not over support for religious institutions), and to avoid the ideological conflicts sure to arise if Olmert pushes forward with his plans for civil marriage, expedited geirus for Russian immigrants, and a core educational curriculum.

One of the perennial rituals in the chareidi community is wondering why United Torah Judaism’s Knesset representation remains stagnant, despite the rapid growth of the chareidi community. This year will be no exception, despite the fact that UTJ increased its representation from five to six. The lowest ever turnout yesterday -– 63% — created a situation tailor-made for UTJ to pick up a seventh seat. In the past, chareidi neighborhoods have produced turnouts of 90% or above.

That was not the case yesterday. The chareidi turnout was only about 10% higher than the general figure. In part that was the result of a few large Chassidic groups deciding to sit out the elections, after their representatives were denied a realistic place on the UTJ list.

Haaretz has a fascinating piece on a Nazi officer’s notebook, which was covered by a fragment sliced from a Torah scroll. It was given by the Nazi officer’s son to Moti Dotan, the head of the Lower Galilee Regional Council, for him to give to “a holy man in the Lower Galilee.”

What passage might you imagine being most appropriate to the Nazis?

Rabbi Grossman turns over the piece of parchment and reads from the text. The parchment is from the book of Deuteronomy, from the weekly portion “Ki Tavo.” The rabbi reads: “…and distress wherewith thy enemy shall distress thee in thy gates … then the Lord will make thy plagues remarkable, and the plagues of thy offspring, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and severe sicknesses, and of long continuance … also every sickness and every plague which is not written in the book of this Torah, them will the Lord bring upon thee, until thou art destroyed. And you shall be left few in number, whereas you were as the stars of the heaven for multitude” (Deuteronomy 28, 57-62).

Read. Shudder. Repeat.

The month of Nisan is upon us, and our preparation for the Festival of Freedom is entering its final, frenetic state. The war in Iraq, foundering on the shoals of the primitiveness of Arab society, should offer us new ways of appreciating what Hakadosh Baruch Hu did for us.

Remember the pride we felt when we learned that one of the strongest influences on President Bush’s thinking about resisting Islamofascism was Natan Sharansky? How the diminutive hero of the refuseniks so impressed the President that he had members of his cabinet read Sharansky’s book? How enthralled America was with the notion that the ultimate weapon against tyranny and repression was democracy itself? If the Iraqis could just stick with it long enough to taste the power of the ballot box, there would be no turning back. They would surely stay the course after that.

The election came and went, and the course instead wended its way into a smoldering civil war. What went wrong?

Remember the disgust so many Americans felt when Iraqis spat at the notion of democracy? Who would not want to be free? What kind of people would laugh at the mention of democracy, and regard it as a tainted failing of heretics and pagans?

Hodesh tov.

I put in an intense 48 hours during the Israel election,(1) first handling media issues then (2) as part of a team driving cross-city and cross-country to get stranded voters to their polling booths.
(1)Media issues: I became alerted to a last minute glitch from a letter in the Jerusalem Post by a floating voter who thought my arguments for voting for Shas were persuasive (I emphasized their accomplishments in education.)
But the letter writer changed his mind Mar.27 when he saw a headline that Rav Ovadia Yosef allegedly said those who did not vote for Shas would be cursed.

After obtaining a copy of the short notice that the Rav had sent to Sefardi yeshiva students who were going to sit out the election, I wrote the Post and they were very fair, printing my explanation the morning of the election.

Sir, - The latest election pronouncement of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the Shas Party, was as American as motherhood and apple pie. He even mentioned, approvingly, the famous Yiddishe Mama.
He quoted the prophetess Deborah, whom the Bible terms “mother in Israel.” Deborah said that those who do not join in the fray and participate actively in national struggles are “cursed… for they failed to come to aid the nation of Hashem… against the mighty” (Judges 5:23).
Rabbi Yosef wrote a letter to Sephardi yeshiva boys who are passive or indifferent to the election, praising those who do go out and vote (for Shas, to be sure). He feels strongly that everyone should participate…This is Zionist activism.

The G-Man had a guest on his show today discussing the election results, which I happened to hear for five minutes during the drive back from an appointment. In those five minutes I heard enough biased and erroneous coverage to fill five hours of writing, but I’ll be brief.

The person whom he was interviewing was obviously a right-wing settler, very opposed to the idea that Olmert’s government will likely conduct further withdrawals, and that the “ultra-Orthodox” Shas party would be party to removing religious Jews from “the heartland” of the Jewish people, Judea and Samaria. I don’t disagree that Hevron is part of the heartland, but so is Jerusalem.

Asks Liddy: Are these the same ultra-Orthodox who are opposed to the existence of the Zionist state?

Answer: No, that’s another group of ultra-Orthodox, who recently went to Iran etc. etc. etc. The interviewee equated the Niturei Karta nutcases, who number 50, with Shas, who polled over 340,000 votes yesterday. No attempt was made to point out that Shas has nothing to do with Niturei Karta, or that they, like any sane individuals, regard them as encouraging murder of Jews.

Along with the political rejection of the hard right, the electorate also repudiated Thatcherite, or free market economics, along with the man most closely identified with it, Binyamin Netanyahu. Even within Netanyahu’s own Likud Party, there was much grumbling from party loyalists about the pinch of Netanyahu’s economic policies, despite the fact that they brought about rapid economic growth and job creation.

Labor Chairman Amir Peretz will almost certainly demand the Finance Ministry portfolio. If he receives it, as also seems likely, expect the Israeli economy to enter the doldrums. Peretz understands nothing of economics, and what he thinks he understands is all wrong. His nostrum for the socio-economic divide – an increase in the minimum wage – would do little for the poor other than cost many of them their jobs. As leader of the Histadrut, Peretz wreaked havoc on the economy through many strikes, almost all of which were called to protect the perquisites of higher-paid government workers.

Those parties most likely to join the government coalition – Labor, Shas, and the Pensioners — will all present Prime Minister Olmert with an expensive wish list. All three campaigned primarily on socio-economic issues. Where the money will come from to meet their demands is not immediately obvious. Settling with the Pensioners, who entered the Knesset for the first time with a bang (seven seats), means less money will be available to meet Shas’ demands for Torah education and the return of some of the cuts in child support.

After navigating through all of the above, Olmert has also proposed a massive West Bank evacuation. As already mentioned, it is far from clear where all this money will come from.

This morning, we know that Ehud Olmert will be the next prime minister, and that Binyamin Netanyahu’s chances of ever again being prime minister are close to nil. Throughout the campaign Olmert and Netanyahu traded sharp and personal jabs, accusing the other of blind ambition and a lack of fixed principles. Both had a point.

With respect to the issues, the Israeli electorate marginalized the so-called hard Right. Yisrael Beiteinu (12), NRP/NU (9), and Likud (11), together garnered only 32 seats, or a little over one-quarter of the Knesset. And neither Likud nor Yisrael Beiteinu ruled out the possibility of further territorial withdrawals. The lessons of the Gaza withdrawal have been reinforced: the religious Right and settler communities no longer enjoy the sympathy and support of the Israeli population.

But even though Olmert campaigned on an platform of further withdrawals, it is unclear that the elections provided him with the mandate he sought. Polls show that most Israelis oppose further unilateral territorial withdrawals. Even some of Olmert’s closest security advisors within Kadima, such as former Shin Beit head Avi Dichter, oppose further moves along the model of the Gaza withdrawal. In Dichter’s view, Israeli troops would have to remain behind even after dismantling settlements to prevent those areas from become launching pads for attacks on Israel’s populous central region.

Furthermore, it is far from clear that the government has the manpower or the funding to carry out the evacuation that Olmert has proposed. He has not hinted where the money would come from to compensate 80,000 settlers (more than ten times the number in Gush Katif) and carry out the evacuation. Meanwhile, former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami said last night that he does not believe that any Israeli government has the forces to remove 80,000 highly ideological and determined settlers from their homes. He is not the first to reach that conclusion.

In today’s Jerusalem Post:

The haredi Nahal unit of the IDF captured an 18-year-old Palestinian suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt at the Beka’ot roadblock in the Jordan Valley on Wednesday afternoon.

The belt held approximately 10kg of explosives, Jordan Valley Battalion Commander Col. Moti Elmoz told Israel Radio.

Sappers successfully defused the bomb.

Jerusalem Post says turnout reached 63%, while Channel 2 says 62%.

With 99.67% of the votes now counted, JPost and Israel National News report:
28 Kadima, 20 Labor, 13 Shas, 12 Israel Beiteinu, 11 Likud, 9 NU/NRP (Mafdal), 7 Pensioners, 6 UTJ, 4 Meretz, and 10 to the Arab parties.

Uri Bank of Mafdal (NU-NRP) speaking to the Jewish Agency webcast, expressed serious disappointment: the right wing is not large enough to prevent the formation of a Kadima-Labor government, which means the West Bank withdrawal proposed by Ehud Olmert is likely to go through.

Israel Channel Two now estimates final voter turnout will be 60%, which is the lowest in history for the Israeli Knesset. The previous low, according to Israel National News, was 69%. The only other time they had a turnout this low was in 2001 — but then there was only a direct vote for the Prime Minister, where people understandably believed their vote was less necessary.

This is good news for the smaller parties, because their voters are, in general, somewhat more motivated than those for the larger ones. However, Jonathan Rosenblum tells me that charedi turnout was disappointing. Indeed both Belz and Slonim came to the polls much less than usually, and apparently the Karlin-Stoliner Rebbe also didn’t recommend either way, leaving it up to the individual whether to go vote. Given the upcoming Pesach holiday, you can imagine that low priorities drop off the page quickly.

Nontheless, UTJ is likely to eke out six seats, and Shas, which polls gave 9 or 10 seats, may benefit from the low turnout.

The blame for any perceived shortcomings with Artscroll does not belong with Artscroll. The real culprit is far more sinister.

My recent post on pictures of Gedolim of previous generations unpredictably invited a large number of comments, many heading in all sorts of directions. A sub-thread took aim at the editorial and hashkafic policies of Artscroll.

I believe that the critics have forgotten an important factor, perhaps the single most important factor in determining Artscroll’s policies. Artscroll is not an academic institution. It is a for-profit business. It can hardly be blamed for doing what businesses do – keeping an eye on the bottom line.

Full disclosure. I’ve been published by Artscroll, and have no complaints about my treatment. I continue to work on an ongoing project. I know many of the writers, and people in the upper administration. Those whom I know are bright, principled, and possessed of definite hashkafic views. At the same time, virtually everyone I’ve met in the Artscroll orbit displays far more intellectual openness than you generally encounter in our community. The people I know enjoy a good thought from Rav Kook, or from Rav Soloveichik. They know all about the treatment of the Three Oaths by the Avnei Nezer, the Meshech Chochmah and others (see comment #35). Their view of the Shoah is nuanced and well-considered.

The Jerusalem Post has an interesting article about Charedi voting in tomorrow’s elections. But as far as I can figure, it combines much ado about nothing with wrong information.

Ya’acov Litzman, who is the Chairman of UTJ [United Torah Judaism, the combination of the charedi parties Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah], says he fears “extremists” coming to Beit Shemesh to disrupt the elections. The Niturei Karta, at last count, numbered no more than 50 people (and probably much less). They can’t disrupt more than one polling station if the descend en masse. And while I recall seeing “action” in elections, the Edah Haredit wasn’t responsible for disruptions.

I think the Degel HaTorah spokesperson has it right: “Litzman’s comment was a tactic to awaken a haredi populace that has shown indifference to voting,” and nothing more. This is because “any attempts by the anti-election Edah Haredit… to intimidate traditional supporters would have a boomerang effect.”

The Edah isn’t really an extremist group. Their Kosher certification is responsible for a considerable portion of the strictly-kosher food available. True, they disagree with voting, but I doubt they’re going to go stand in the way. Maybe someone in Jerusalem can correct me in the comments, but this otherwise is likely to prove “much ado about nothing.”

On Friday, Shira Schmidt took Eytan Kobre to task for his earlier post “deriding the Conservative movement’s current quandry.” Her view is that help, understanding and a “life-preserver” are preferable to derision or a patronizing attitude.

While it is always difficult to argue against a more gentle approach, I nonetheless see a place for sarcasm in an article like Eytan’s. The Conservative movement is having an ever-so-serious discussion that obviously boils down to when, not if, it will place modern Western values ahead of the eternal Torah, all the while attempting to wrap the discussion in “Halachic” terms. When presented with something plainly ridiculous, sometimes it is right to rise to the challenge. “Ridiculous” is “deserving or inspiring ridicule;” what’s wrong with being inspired?

An unseemly form of ridicule would be to simply call them ignorant fools, and leave it at that. To offer a real-world parallel, there are those who dismissed Rabbi Adlerstein’s sensitive discussion of homosexuals and homosexuality by calling him a homophobe. Anyone who bothered to read his articles knows otherwise, but believe me, there are those out there who stopped reading at the headline and imagined they knew what he had to say. That is ill-advised and adds nothing to the discussion, regardless of which side you take or wish to critique.

Not so, Eytan Kobre’s acerbic pen. To take the first of his comments by example:

24 bAdar

What do you do when you enjoy a colleague’s witty, acerbic satire of other Jews, but you feel that perhaps one should not mock people, even if you believe their derekh is mistaken? That is how I felt when I read Eytan Kobre’s article Playing (for Time) (March 19) deriding the Conservative movement’s current quandry below in Cross-currents.

In the Purim issue of the Jewish Observer R. Yisrael Rutman analyzed the statement from the Talmud Megilla 25b “All ridicule is forbidden,except the ridicule of idol worship.” R. Rutman cites the Talmudic examples of when mockery is legitimate.

Rather than proferring derision, I suggest we offer a life-preserver to those who are on the Conservative movement’s ship which is about to break apart due to the eventual legitimization they will give (sooner or later) to ordaining rabbis who engage in mishkav zakhar (sodomy) and related activities. There are a number of rabbis and lay people who could fit into the milieu of the modern Orthodox and modern haredi lifestyle.

These photos of gedolim (world-class Torah luminaries) in their younger days should not be missed. They range from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th, and contain several dimensions of surprise. Some of the subjects are smart, rakish dressers. Some are members of a Zionist organization operating within a great Lithuanian yeshiva. Some display an informality rarely seen later in life. Many are clean-shaven.

The set will serve as a Rorschach test of attitudes towards change within the yeshiva world. Depending on their own leanings, some people will bemoan the increased uniformity and regimentation of later times. Some will see the intrusion into the Lithuanian orbit of Chassidic modes of thought, with its greater emphasis on demonstrable separateness. Others will see the opposite: a healthy decision to oppose the openness of more Westernized societies with a conscious decision to circle the wagons and protect what is inside.

Whatever your orientation, these pictures are a delight, and may very well change your view of life in the “holier” days of old. They will certainly inspire much discussion. [Thanks to Harvey Tannenbaum, Efrat for mailing the link.]

The NY Jewish Week covers the “largest PEJE conference ever.” PEJE is the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, and the fact that this conference is large and growing can only mean good things.

Non-Orthodox day schools are now popping up all over the country — and whatever we might have to say about the movements themselves, Day Schools are a positive force. They are much better than Hebrew schools, and usually not as doctrinal as the movements (one reason: many of the teachers are, as you might have figured, Orthodox).

A generation ago, many Modern Orthodox Jews sent their children to public school, but today a day school or yeshiva education is all but a given for this cohort.

What changed?

Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta recently devised an interesting experiment to test the reasoning, or the lack thereof, of political partisans.

Prior to the 2004 American presidential election, a group of Kerry supporters and a group of Bush supporters were each given six statements by their candidate. Next they were given pieces of information that documented a blatant contradiction between their candidate’s first statement and his subsequent words or deeds. At that point, the subjects were asked to consider the apparent discrepancy between their candidate’s initial statement and the second statement or behavior and to rate the degree of contradiction involved. Finally, they were given a third statement that might reconcile the first and second piece of information, and asked to reconsider the degree of contradiction involved.

While being presented with these tasks, the subjects’ brains were being monitored by magnetic resonance to determine what areas of the brain were most active. The investigators found that the presentation of the information raising questions about the honesty or consistency of the subject’s favored candidate triggered no increased activity in the brain in areas normally associated with reasoning. Instead a network of emotional circuits lit up.

When the third statement offering a possible reconciliation of the first two was presented, the brain circuits that regulate negative emotions such as sadness and disgust shut down, while those involved in behavior reward were activated, in a manner comparable to that seen in drug addicts after receiving a dose.

I am gratified that someone pointed out this column from the Jerusalem Post, called “What Conservative Judaism conserved.” It is relevant to other recent posts, of course, but also stands on its own.

The author is a former chairman of the Council of Regional Presidents of the United Synagogue of America — a high-ranking lay position in the Conservative movement. So he speaks as a knowledgeable insider, as one who help conduct a survey of Conservative families in the late 1970s. Yet I have not previously heard of their conclusions:

The results of the survey were devastating to those of us who conducted it as well as to the movement’s leadership. We were able to show, with a high degree of statistical accuracy, that the movement in the US had no long-term capacity to replicate itself.

We found that while many adult members of the movement came from more observant backgrounds, they, in the absence of any long-term commitment to religious observance, had not been able to convey the same level of religious feeling to their children.

My last post re Conservative clergy mulling homosexual ordination generated comment from several people who communicated their distaste for what I wrote. They raised issues that I feel I should address, and, indeed, I’ve directly contacted two of them to discuss their concerns. I feel I should discuss this on Cross Currents as well and will, bl”n, do so in a coming post.

But for now, I thought I’d reprint here an article of mine entitled “Judaism, Nature and Homosexuality” that appeared in the Forward in February 2001, both because of its general relevance to the current Conservative situation and its specific relevance to the following Ha’aretz news item cited in Shira Schmidt’s recent comment:

“Rabbi Alan Cohen of Overland Park, Kansas, said his synagogue, in a show of sensitivity to gays, years ago replaced a traditional Bible reading on the afternoon of the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year.His congregation dropped the reading that included Leviticus 18:22, which says: ‘Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.’”

Here, pace clergyman Cohen, is my piece:

The JTA headline on the recent World Zionist Organization elections says “WZO Elections Send Pluralist Message - But Who’s Listening?” Perhaps the reason why no one is listening is because that isn’t really the message, at all.

The Reform movement is celebrating their win of 55 of the 145 total seats. The JTA points out that the non-Orthodox voices remain the majority: “Of the 145 delegates up for grabs in balloting for the U.S. slate to the WZO’s 35th Congress of the Jewish People, 89 went to parties representing progressive religious movements — Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist.”

This is, however, a shallow victory. Of far greater import are the trendlines to be followed by comparing this election with previous ones. In the last election, the Reform movement won 61 seats, over 40%, and in 1997 they took 70 seats, nearly half the total. This time around, the Religious Zionist slate won 35 seats, taking second place from the Conservative movement’s Mercaz for the first time — and more than doubling their 1997 tally.

Overall, one of the most interesting results is the fact that fewer and fewer people seem to care. While nearly 108,000 people participated in 1997, this year fewer than 75,700 bothered to vote.

As I read about the latest decision by Conservatism to kick the can down the road regarding homosexual ordination, “marriage,” etc., and the ensuing donnybrook of recrimination and response unfolding within the movement, several things just don’t compute. Let me list the ways:

The Forward reports that

On the eve of their annual convention, Conservative rabbis are locked in a fierce debate over whether movement leaders have employed improper tactics to preserve the ban on gay clergy and same-sex marriage. . . .

At issue is a procedural rule, quietly adopted last June by the assembly’s executive council, that allows the movement’s top lawmaking body to raise the threshold of votes needed to approve certain major positions. Under previous rules, the movement’s 30-member Committee on Jewish Law and Standards had required only six votes to give legitimacy to a minority opinion. The new rule raises the bar to 20 votes when dealing with selected “momentous” decisions. Many movement rabbis say that they were unaware of the rule change until last week, when the law committee decided to apply the 20-vote threshold to a sweeping opinion that seeks to overturn the movement’s ban on homosexual sex. . . .

Marc Hauser and Peter Singer, professor of psychology at Harvard and professor of bioethics at Princeton respectively, recently sought to prove in these pages that our sense of morality is the result of evolution, and has nothing to do with God (”Godless morality,” January 8 ). They succeeded instead only in confirming suspicions that much of evolutionary psychology (or sociobiology, as it is variously known) is pseudo-science and an Ivy League education is grossly overpriced.

Hauser and Singer’s arguments are part of a larger effort to employ evolutionary psychology to refute religious belief. The very ubiquity of belief in spiritual beings, souls, an afterlife, etc., it is argued, is ipso facto proof that these beliefs have their roots in human evolution. Hauser/Singer, for instance, posed three moral questions to people. Based on the uniformity of answers in over 90 percent of the cases, regardless of religiosity, they conclude that moral intuitions have nothing to do with religious belief but are generated by evolution.

Writing in Atlantic Monthly, Paul Bloom, a Yale professor of psychology and linguistics, cites experiments showing that even infants attribute agency and intention to animate objects. That ability is crucial to the development of social understanding. But, according to Bloom, the innate genetic tendency to see agency also causes human beings to find design in the universe where none exists.

Responding to Bloom’s article, one reader shared the brilliant explanation given by his college anthropology professor for the development of a “God-gene”: primitive people who buried their dead in order to prepare them for entry into an afterlife lived in more sanitary conditions and thus were favored by natural selection.

This is one of those challenges we throw out to our readers. It represents thought in progress, not a finished product. Please don’t take it as such.

The Orthodox community continues to grapple with defining its own limits, particularly on the left. Many of us believe that there is not just one way to look at a slew of important issues. Yet, we firmly believe that belief is hardly a free-for-all; there are – for lack of a better word – normative expectations of belief, not just actions. These expectations shape the boundaries of Orthodoxy, and allow us to regard even those we disagree with as “insiders” rather than “outsiders.”

I can, and often do, disagree with friends about acculturation, dress, politics, authority, the Flatbush eruv, Rav Kook, Torah Codes, Rav SR Hirsch, the role of the State of Israel, and dinosaurs. Especially dinosaurs. For my part, I have no trouble seeing those with whom I disagree – on both the right and the left – as firmly within the orbit of Orthodoxy, even though I understand my mandate to convey my views to my own talmidim (students) with fervor and conviction. This is the way of Torah.

There are solutions that work some of the time. Many people like to define Orthodoxy as a belief in the Divinity of both the Written and Oral Law, finding binding instruction on practical matters within the Shulchan Aruch and accepted commentaries, and embracing the Thirteen Principles of the Rambam as the intellectual context within which one practices. There are academic challenges to these three prongs, but they are not what I wish to reflect about here.

According to the Miami Herald, “Now even Orthodox rabbis, the staunchest opponents of interfaith marriage, are exploring ways to encourage conversions.”

Of course, as the article goes on to stress, the rabbis at the conference they were covering were discussing the unique situation of an intermarriage, where the couple is a fait accompli. In that situation, one has to balance the reluctance to accept conversion with the benefits of a Jewish marriage for the Jewish spouse.

Even so, the word “encourage” is probably not merely an exaggeration, but flat-out wrong. The opposition is merely reduced because now conversion can, in Rabbi Leib Tropper’s words, “remedy a problem.” That’s not a suggestion to evangelize to the non-Jewish spouse like New York’s “Jewish Outreach Institute.” Not slamming the door three times isn’t the same as dragging people through it.

Also, nothing here seems to be truly new. Were there “ground-breaking discussions among Jewish legal scholars on how to simplify the long and involved Orthodox conversion process?” It doesn’t sound that way at all. Rather, the conference was an effort to educate the attending rabbis in the appropriate Halachic methodologies for conversion of the non-Jewish partner.

One of the highlights of a recent speaking tour in the United States was my first visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. I had some doubts in advance whether there was any point in going since I had been to the new exhibition hall at Yad Vashem just a few months ago. Those doubts, however, quickly dissipated. Much to my surprise, I found the visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum to be an even more powerful experience than Yad Vashem.

To my mind, the U.S. museum did a better job of encouraging an individual encounter with the enormity of the Holocaust. The entire permanent exhibit is darkened, leaving one alone with one’s own thoughts, as well as much less aware of the presence of others, than in the brightly lit hall at Yad Vashem. The progression through the U.S. museum is more or less linear, while at Yad Vashem one can find oneself wandering between the rooms in no particular order.

There were no guided tours at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Such tours proliferate at Yad Vashem.

The decision to eschew guides is, in my opinion, a wise one. Guides have their own time schedule to keep, which inevitably conflicts with one’s own inclination to linger in one particular place or another. Unless one knows absolutely nothing about the Holocaust, the guide’s comments are more likely to constitute unwelcome intrusions into one’s own thoughts than a source of illumination.