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Forum -> Chinuch, Education & Schooling
Holocaust worse than the churban bayis
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amother
OP


 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 9:09 am
tichellady wrote:
I don’t think it’s the worst thing for kids to hear different opinions about this or to commemorate Yom hashoah. I also think comparing atrocities and tragedies is bizarre and unproductive . I do think a genocide is different from the churban, the goals were different and many would argue ( at least based on the neviim) that the temple could only be destroyed because it was already corrupt and no longer representative of Gd.


I have no problem with Yom HaShoa. I do think it's audacious of a chol teacher to impose his hashkafa on a school that doesn't have that hashkafa. But I'll ignore even that. If he is going to do it. He needs to do it right.

The comparison was disgusting and confusing. If he had said this was the worst thing in "modern" Jewish history I would have been ok, but to say it was worse than the fact that we lost the BHM. But our education/hashkafa is to yearn for Mashiach and the rebuilding of the Basis HaMikdash.
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Crookshanks




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 10:21 am
In high school when we learned about the Churban, someone did bring up which is worse. My teacher answered that pain is infinity. 6 million times infinity is infinity. 1 million times infinity is still infinity. You can't quantify pain based on numbers.
Besides for that, the whole thing is off, and I assume this is not the hashkafa of the school the teacher works for. Your son sounds really smart, and pretty brave too.
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amother
Chocolate


 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 10:26 am
amother [ OP ] wrote:
That's what really upset me! This teacher started estimating what the number could have been?!?

I wish he would just stick to math. Count watermelons and not Jewish lives.




Honestly, I agree it was an inappropriate topic for a secular teacher but I don't necessarily think that understanding and appreciating how tragic and horrific a particular event was by the number of lives lost is that off the mark.
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ora_43




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 11:02 am
I think it was a dumb thing to say, but not too horrible.

Dumb, because seriously, don't compare horrible things, there's never any need for that. Is it worse to have cancer, or AIDS? To lose a loved one in a car crash, or a terrorist attack? To suffer through war, or famine? <-- these are all pointless questions with no real answers, but a lot of potential to hurt people's feelings

And also because, well - he's trying to use numbers to "solve" a history question. History isn't just about whether A is bigger than B. There are so many other factors here - the destruction of the beit hamikdash, the loss of sovereignty in eretz Yisrael, the tremendous impact on Jewish history. Plus, of course, the fact that raw numbers and percentages are different; fewer people total died in the wars around churban habayit, but it was an equal (roughly) percentage of the total Jewish population.

Not too horrible, because it's not like a comparison to the Holocaust is particularly minimizing. He didn't say the churban habayit wasn't absolutely horrific, just that it wasn't the single worst thing to happen to the Jewish people. That's controversial, and he probably should have run it past the principal, but it's not really "how dare you say that" levels of insensitive.

FTR, OP, your son's response was great.
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suremom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 12:09 pm
How can you say only 1 million died by the churban? It says there were 400 shuls, with 400 teachers in each who had 400 students each. All killed. (tur malka?) that's 64,000,000! We cant even comprehend such numbers!
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amother
Cobalt


 

Post Thu, Apr 08 2021, 12:51 pm
Is it so hard to imagine that there was more than one Holocaust in our history?
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