TOO MUCH HIP-HOP IN HOLOCAUST MESSAGE
Australian Jewish News, Australia
May 7 2007
It’s been a week of sensory overload of the Jewish kind. Not that
there’s anything wrong with that.
In fact I quite like being bombarded with material – theatrical,
musical and newsworthy – that has my people at its epicentre.
It makes me feel strangely alive, as though I’m grappling with
questions and subject matter that have a unique significance.
I know it is less than fashionable to be so ethnocentric these days,
but habits formed and evolved over half a century are not so easy
to break. And if the truth be told, I suppose I’d really rather not
change them, anyway.
That said, there’s quite a lot I’d change about the video clip on
YouTube (). It is a fusion of classical
violin, modern ballet and hip-hop generated by a group calling itself
"Gedenk," the Yiddish word for remember.
Its comrades claim it is a humanitarian movement established in 2006
to educate people about antisemitism and the Holocaust.
Its broader task, they tell us, is the education of youth and the
general population about the consequences of bigotry and hatred,
citing the outrages of the Armenian, Roma, Rwandan and Darfur genocides
alongside the Jewish.
All very fine and commendable, one would think, a) before reading
the blurb in its entirety and b) before playing the excruciating
video clip.
"Gedenk will use commercial outlets, i.e. music, dance, billboards and
celebrities to communicate its message and make the Jewish Holocaust
relevant to today’s youth. Those that do not speak up are as guilty
as the criminals themselves! …
"We believe it is no longer acceptable to remain silent, for it is
today’s generation that is responsible for remembering the history
of the world and insuring that such heinous crimes will never be
tolerated again."
As my daughter remarked in one of her pithier responses to this
gelatinous outpouring, why do we so desperately need to "reach?"
The whole idea of reaching is a reach in and of itself. Just as it
is impossible to explain the excruciating pain of limb-breakage to
someone who has never broken a leg or an arm before, so is it equally
impossible to keep "reaching" people to communicate one’s pain at
the Holocaust almost 70 years on.
The most important thing, she reminded me, the vital thing, is the
building of relationships outside the community.
This is what saved some Jews during the Holocaust – the fact that
they had people on the outside who cared about them enough and were
brave enough to put their own lives on the line for Jews in danger.
Heaven forbid that I would suggest that those who weren’t saved by
outsiders were somehow at fault. Nothing could be further from my mind.
There is nothing those Jews then could have done to change their
collective fate. It was a nightmare long coming and unstoppable once
it had arrived.
But 70 years on we need to develop the idea of building relationships
with the wider community at a far more individual core.
We need to stop with the try-hard hip-hop artists, the sexy violinists
and the naked dance troupes in a truly horrendous propagandising
effort to force others to feel our pain.
This technique only appeals to Jews so desperate to "reach" others
with their own overpowering emotions that they are in denial about
the way such burlesque play-acting will be viewed in a world whose
legs and arms, on the whole, have not been broken.
As my daughter so succinctly nutshelled it for me: If you think holding
on to your ethnicity is more important than marrying someone you love,
than establishing deep connections with members outside the tribal
group, that’s fine.
It’s more than fine. It’s how many of us choose to live our lives.
But you can’t have it all. Making ethnicity the primary factor inside
which one’s entire existence is cocooned can endanger you, too.
In the light of all history has taught and shown us, it is simply
unrealistic to believe that we need never change, that we don’t
deserve to have any problems simply because of who and what we are.
Holding onto our ethnicity exacts a heavy price, and unfortunately
for the young "Third Generation Holocaust Survivors" of Gedenk, all
the singing of simplistic hip hop, dancing by naked artistes smeared
with dirt and wielding of violins by curly-headed, flashing-eyed Jewish
lassies is not enough currency to ensure the scenario of ‘Never Again.’
In the real world, it will require much more than YouTube.
Then there was this amazing theatrical performance I attended in a tiny
space – seats 40, perhaps 60, but only with a very large shoehorn –
that was everything the above video-nonsense was not.
There is also the issue of lycra and rabbis and sexy women’s bodies,
but I see it’s all too much for one week, so perhaps it would be best
to take up the slack with a digest of that material at a later date.
Still, for the sake of those in search of a truly original experience
of theatre, I would strongly urge all those who have not yet done
so to make their way to Natalie Krasnostein’s amazing performance of
her one-person cabaret, In God’s Bedroom.
She describes it as a one-woman, one-God, one-act show featuring God,
King David, Natalie Krasnostein and others in a singing, dancing,
story-telling expose of love, suffering, abandonment and joy.
Directed by Jonno Katz, Music by Adam Starr.
It is being staged until May 12 at Eurotrash, 18 Corrs Lane,
Melbourne. To book, go to or ring (03)
9654 4411.
Everything and more you ever wanted to know about God’s relationship
with the stiff-necked tribe of Jews is here for the asking.
It’s funny, it’s moving, the songs – original and performed by Natalie
and accompanied by the understated, immensely talented Adam Starr –
are astonishing.
It’s also extremely witty and surprisingly sophisticated. Don’t miss
it. It’s theatre as it should be. Quite exhilarating and midrashically
illuminating. You’ll find some wonderful ideas explored and performed.
And I assure you, I’m much less likely to want to instigate a new
Holocaust – and much more likely to want to dissuade others from
doing so – after watching a performance like that than after being
assailed by the trite "kitschy crap" (to quote the outraged friend
who sent it me) courtesy of Gedenk and YouTube.
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