We are dedicating this program to the survivors of the Holocaust and the remembrance of the deceased, especially the children to whom our hearts are turned and who were the inspiration for the program. As we researched, created, wrote and produced the program we could feel God's heart-cry for these persons: He has not forgotten, even if the whole world has.
We also thank UTC for the use of their computer equipment, and Congregation Mizpah in Chattanooga for their teaching, use of their library and kindness toward my Christian family as they allowed us to share Shabbat with them. We thank Dr. Irven Resnick, head of Judaic Studies, UTC and Tzipporah Altman Shafer for their advisement. During the development of this program we encountered prejudice and difficulties and discovered that many non-Jews do not want to remember. We also encountered pride. We have given our time , talent and resources,and even hundreds of hours as a free gift, and yet others wanted credit, authorship or to own the work they had nothing to do with, all out of hard- heartedness. It is not politics that causes wars. It is not history and philosophies that cause wars. It is not religion that causes wars. It is not politics, history, philosophies or religion that caused the Shoah. Or the thousands of persecutions, pogroms or mass murders of the Jewish nation and others. It was pride and hard-heartedness.
We want to believe that other people deserve less than we do, that they are not as "good" as we are. We are all unrighteous before a perfect God. Josephus said it took 25 years after a destruction for the Jews to begin to write about it. The Jewish survivors' community is pouring its heart out now: all the cry of a persecuted people.
Even those in churches, synagogues, and holocaust studies can have hard hearts. It's easy to scapegoat enemies with opposing religious views. But when those who love the Jewish nation and want to see it preserved and protected for pride's sake turn on each other, we are incapable of teaching about Shoah. We become Shoah instead.
USE THIS PROGRAM WITH A SOFT HEART. When we wrote it and produced it we were the objects of ridicule and scorn in a community. We were the ones who were rejected as certain individuals decimated our character, reputation and lives because they did not think we looked or lived well enough to be the authors of our own work. We have the solution:
We will list as honorary authors, each week on our website, the names of mothers, fathers and children who died: whose lives were too short to win awards, whose honor was cut off.
May the Glory be God's alone.
The Wisdom of the World, is foolishness to God.
(c)E.Best & S. Best 1998, All rights reserved. Free to use for the purposes expressed with permission. BACK
