NOTHING LIKE A GOOD JEWISH COMIC

At a nightclub in Tel Aviv, young writers, musicians and dancers took the stage on April 24, the eve of Israel's official Holocaust Memorial Day, to present their personal take on the cataclysm.

Shai Golden stood with a microphone before the club packed with hundreds of young Israelis for what is called the Alternative Holocaust Ceremony, and suggested that the Holocaust might just be another way God has tried to "break up" with the Jewish people.

New York Times

By DINA KRAFT
Published: May 23, 2006

Tom Segev, a journalist who explored Israel's complex relationship with the Holocaust in a book, "The Seventh Million," said preserving the memory of the Holocaust was one of the few subjects that binds Israeli society.

"The Holocaust today is a very central part of Israeli identity, something shared by all Israelis whether they are religious, secular, left-wing or right-wing and even by some Arabs," Mr. Segev said. He notes that almost every day a Holocaust-related article appears and that most Jewish Israelis have internalized the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people as a cornerstone of their collective identity. (Read more)