My husband and I talked about how the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. differs from Yad Vashem in Israel. While Yad Vashem is set up as a memorial, my husband offered, the U.S. Holocaust Museum is presented as a way to teach about the Holocaust and about genocide in general. I highly recommend anyone visiting Washington, DC to visit the museum.

This shot was taken from the top of the Washington Monument, looking down on the museum. There is an exhibit in the museum called “The Story of Daniel.” It is billed as being for children; I walked through it before I took my eight-year-old daughter, and I thought, this isn’t that scary. However, when I took my daughter, I felt differently. I could feel her fear and discomfort. She said she liked one of the early parts of the exhibit, a scene that showed a kitchen where Daniel, his sister and his mother baked cookies and a fancy cake, to be her favorite part. Perhaps because life was still normal for Daniel. His sister and mother were later killed at Auschwitz. The exhibit showed how bit by bit he was no longer allowed to swim in the municipal pool or even play in the park because he was a Jew. “Did you ever get blamed for something you didn’t do?” the exhibit asked. “We were.”

The exhibit showed little of the concentration camp; it mostly said it was horrible, horrible. One woman asked her friend how did the men (Daniel and his father survived Auschwitz) survive if the women did not? I offered that perhaps the men were taken to work, whereas the women were taken immediately to the crematorium. It was interesting to engage others that I had just met in a discussion. One mentioned the movie “Life is Beautiful,” and I suggested “Schindler’s List.”

As this wall states, everyone who comes to the museum can be a witness to the atrocity and tragedy of the Holocaust.

I would have liked to have seen this exhibit or presentation: “From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide.” The museum staff, however, said that presentation was not happening the day of our visit. We also saw an exhibit on Nazi propaganda. A woman said to one of the museum staffers: “Don’t you think we live in an age of propaganda?” I am not sure what she meant, but I think we live in an age of information overload. What do you think?

If you are interested in kosher food in Washington, D.C., there are four packaged foods at the Holocaust cafe: tuna on a white roll, sesame noodles, salad, and beans and brown rice in a wrap. I thought the beans/rice in wrap delicious, the sesame noodles tasty, and my middle son was willing to eat the roll of the tuna sandwich (my husband ate the tuna). My eldest son refused all the food. He preferred Eli’s Restaurant.

We did not get a chance to see all the exhibits at the museum; I thought my daughter had had enough, and my eldest son was hungry. So we will have to see more on a future visit. If you have been to the museum, I would love to hear your feedback on what you found effective and well-presented.

The Rebbetzin’s Husband has an important post up called Talking to children about depression. He asks: “At what point should parents talk to their children about depression?”

I was pleased to read the other comments left on this post. It is a difficult and important topic, and I’m glad at least a few people feel comfortable discussing it.

If you have any comments or suggestions on this topic, please leave a comment, either on the Rebbetzin’s husband’s post or on this blog (or both). Thanks.

So yesterday I spent sitting in the courthouse in New Brunswick. Never even got called into the court room. So what was one do from 8:00 am to 2:30 pm when we were finally let out?

1. Read the magazines and newspapers left out on the table for jurors to read.
2. Make conversation by the coffee machine. “Is the coffee any good?” I asked someone. I had already read everything I had brought, and I was just trying to strike up conversation.
3. Read books that you brought. Of course, you came prepared with plenty of reading material, right?
4. Daydream.
5. Plan your next vacation. If you don’t have money or time to take a real vacation, plan what you will cook for dinner.
6. People watch: lots of different kinds of people show up at the Middlesex County Courthouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
7. Think about what you might photograph if you were in a place that was worth photographing (unless you were doing a piece on urban depressing sights, I don’t think this room would be appropriate. And I doubt taking pictures of jurors is legal, anyway).
8. Stretch. Do some neck rolls. Move your legs around. Walk around the room.
9. Draw.
10. Write a blog post on ten things to do while waiting at jury duty.

Here’s what I didn’t see on my day yesterday – a view of New Brunswick from the Highland Park side, Raritan River all sparkly, photographed in Fall 2008:

This past week my daughter and I watched a movie together called Kit Kittredge. The movie itself was fine: good triumphs over evil, as it should in a movie for a 7-year-old. It takes place during the Depression in the 1930′s, and the people in the film experience loss and lowered economic status. There were some underlying, Hollywoodish type themes – for example, is Robin Hood a good guy? Is it OK to rob from the rich and give it to the poor? (the film seemed to imply yes, and I would say no – rich people should give charity, not be the victims of theft). The mother of the main character, a girl named Kit, decides to take in boarders in order to be able to keep their house. Somehow “selling eggs” becomes symbolic of stooping low, and near the end of the film the mother does acquire some chickens so they can sell eggs as well, which Kit is not happy about (but she accepts).

What bothered me in particular about this was that my paternal grandfather sold eggs in the Depression! That was how he supported his family of seven (five children). He would venture out to the egg farms in New Jersey and bring them back to Brooklyn to sell. My father said at some point he helped with the accounting; at the end of each month, my grandfather would have no money left and need to start a new. There was never any savings, but at least they had food to eat.

What was your family doing in the 1930′s?

Update: See Risa’s post about her grandfather who had a store in Brooklyn.

Last Friday RJ Flamingo (who blogs Flamingo Musings) described me (leoraw) on Twitter as: “nature-lover and WordPress maven.” I liked that description. I am in the Berkshires now on a ski vacation, and so I will be checking to see what you write on Thursday. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we will be busy skiing and then traveling home to New Jersey. I hope to post some Sky Watch pictures on Thursday; the skies are beautiful in the mountains here.

The idea is that as children we are often told to be humble (or some of us were), but as adults we need to learn the balance between tooting our own horns and being too loud about ourselves and thus arrogant. By describing your own positive attributes, you will then present your best face to the world. Or you can help someone else by describing what you see as some of their positive characteristics.

How do you find comfort? What do you do when something or someone in your life, community or in world news causes you pain? How do you get in touch with the pain and also find new ways of self-comfort?

When my children were babies, I remember learning that it was important that they learn to self-comfort. If every time a child cries, a parent or guardian rushes to the child’s side, how will the child learn to cope on his or her own? My boys, I remember, each had a blanket that was precious in the going to sleep process.

One of my friends, when times are hard, reads from the Book of Psalms (Tehilim) when she is in distress. I feel she is fortunate that she can find comfort in that manner.

Today is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day when the Beit HaMikdash, the holy temple that was in Jerusalem, was destroyed. Other tragic events happened on this date as well. In two days we read the haftorah from the Book of Isaiah, in which he proclaims (Isaiah 40:1-2) -

Comfort, comfort my people, so says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.

“Double from sins”? – Is this referring to then or now? It seems the pain continues to this day; the warfare does not seem at an end.

And later Isaiah says (Isaiah 40:7-8) -

Indeed man is but grass: Grass withers, flowers fade – but the Word of our God is always fulfilled!

We can read all of Isaiah (especially the part from Chapter 40 and on), and some of us may find some comfort in the words. For many of us, struggling to understand the words of the ancient prophet is as far as we can get. Perhaps we are meant to know that even if we don’t understand the Big Picture, God does.

So getting back to comfort, here’s a short list from me, perhaps I can get your creative juices running, too:

• Write a blog post.
• Talk to a friend.
• Paint. Draw. Putter in the garden. Find a creative outlet.

More on comfort and Isaiah:
Comfort, Comfort (2005) by Professor Gary A. Rendsburg, chair of the department that I do work for at Rutgers, the Jewish Studies Department

More on Tisha B’Av:
Baila explains how it is hard to be a Jew, even if she is finally living in a Jewish homeland.

On the upcoming parsha (Torah portion of the week):
Ilana-Davita looks for a response to current troubles by studying Parshat Va-Etchanan.