I agree that the Holocaust museums and memorials are a waste of resources.  They are about as effective at stopping hatred as red ribbons were at curing AIDS.  In fact, they are even less effective, as they create backlash, and suck up Jewish communal funds.  We should sell most of them and give proceeds directly to survivors, especially survivors like the relatively recent Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel, where many live in poverty.

 It was their Holocaust first.  You want the Holocaust to have meaning for Darfur? Let's start with taking care of our own who went through it. If we can't even do that (and we are not doing that) we certainly have no claim on any of it.

 I realize that taking care of old and sick people isn't as exciting as radical hot Tikkun Olam, but we really have to shut up about our communal interpretation of the Holocaust if we can't even do that.   

What I really don't get is: What is the point of Yom Ha-Shoah?

Just a few weeks ago, on 27 Nissan, we had a day marked on the calendar called Yom HaShoah. Some Jews observed it, others did not, others’ observances were postponed for a week due to the weather, and others wouldn’t even know how. This observance of a tragic event in Jewish history occurred only two weeks after we yet again tell the story of how the Egyptians oppressed and enslaved us, some 3700 years ago. And this telling is, in turn, only one month after are told to remember how an evil Amalekite named Haman tried to kill us in the Persian era. In these two latter holidays, the Jews end up “winning,” or at least surviving (in marked contrast to YomHaShoah).

Chanukah too marks a victory – or at least our survival. Traditionally, only these three holidays commemorate the continued existence of the Jewish people in the face of an imminent threat. In contrast, we have five fast days in addition to the fast on the Day of Atonement: the Fast of Gedaliah, 10 Tevet, the Fast of Esther, 17 Tammuz, and, of course, Tisha B’Av.

With the exception of the Yom Kippur martyrology, we do not as a people regularly observe, or even remember many other tragic events in Jewish history: the Crusades, blood libel and well-poisoning slanders, the Spanish Inquisition and Expulsion, forced conversions, exile-or-death decrees, pogroms, or any other atrocities of living in the Middle Ages or the "Enlightenment" era. Nor do we have organized observances of our suffering at the hands of the Christians and the Muslims -– suffering that is going on right now, every single day.

We take time in our yearly cycle to remember the threats by the Amalekites or the Greeks. But because these are ancient civilizations, we might as well be talking about being destroyed by dinosaurs. Every day in Israel, Jews are being attacked while sitting in cafes, riding on buses, and attending school, at the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaida. And in Europe as well as here in America, anti-Semitism is on the rise. Why not pick one day to commemorate all the atrocities committed against the Jewish people, past and present? Or choose one day for each atrocity – but include them all. Are we afraid of offending our Christian and Muslim neighbors by calling attention to the present suffering in an organized way?