>> Tonight, a New York Museum takes on anti-Semitism around the world and the resilience of the jewish people after the Holocaust.

And, examining the resurgence of anti-Semitism.

"MetroFocus" starts right now.

♪ >> This is "MetroFocus," with Rafael pi Roman, Jack Ford, Jenna Flanagan.

"MetroFocus" is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.

Charlotte and David akhert.

Tiger Baron foundation.

Nancy and Noris.

Josh Weston.

>> Good evening and welcome to "MetroFocus," I'm Rafael pi Roman.

In response to resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world and ignorance of the Holocaust as survey after survey has demonstrated, there is a new museum in New York.

The exhibition entitled missing generations, photographed by Jill Friedman, is a showing at the art collection at river spring living.

It includes photographs of survivors returning on the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

The chief curator and director and the president and CEO of a nonprofit serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York join us tonight as part of our exploring hate initiative.

Thank you, a pleasure to have you with us.

Susan, how did this exhibition come to be and can you summarize that?

Susan: Thank you for allowing me to talk about this important exhibition.

About three years ago I met the family of Jill Friedman.

She passed away in 2019 and her family has the estate.

She has many different bodies of work and we were looking for something that would be timely, topical and appropriate for us to exhibit so we chose these works on the theme of the Holocaust.

Rafael: Daniel, why did this come to be at the Judaica Museum?

Daniel: The museum, on the campus of Riverdale, years ago recognized we had an obligation to preserve the history of the Jewish population and the Judaica Museum was created.

We have been fortunate to have a curator as excellent as Susan knew understands the importance of the museum.

When we created the museum in the 1980's through the generosity of two wonderful people, Ralph and luba baum, we amassed a collection of Judaica.

At the time, almost all the residents of the Hebrew home campus were Jewish, many were Holocaust survivors.

We still serve the Jewish population.

We have far fewer Holocaust survivors, which is why it is even more important to show this kind of work, to remind people that as you pointed out, they may have forgotten or chosen to deny the Holocaust.

This is very important we use our space and this location to remind the world and more than ever today, that the Holocaust was real and there are Holocaust continuing even as we speak.

Rafael: These photographs were taken in the early 1990's, but in an application for a fellowship to help her expand the project beyond Poland to surrounding areas of Poland, Ms. Freedman Wrote she felt there was an urgency to it because one, ethnic cleansing was once again being perpetrated in Europe in the war raging in former Yugoslavia at the time and two, because historical revisionists were denying the Holocaust had even happens.

You touched on this, but I like to get response from both of you.

Do you think these times are equally as urgent for this history and pictures, photographs that reflected, to be seen by as many people as possible?

Susan: I think these are urgent times for jews and other people.

That is part of the message of Jill's work.

She wanted people to have empathy, to care for one another.

She wanted people to understand they had a responsibility to come to the aid of people who were different from them and that message in the intervening years is even more important today than it might have been in some of the intervening years since 1993 when she took the photos.

Daniel: Absolutely.

Those who choose to ignore history are destined to repeat it.

Our obligation is to preserve history.

Susan put together a very powerful correct -- collection at a critical moment.

Who would have known that we would be seeing what we are seeing in Ukraine and the world is where it is today and in the last three years the incidents of anti-Semitism is the highest form of discrimination we are seeing of all ethnic and racial classes.

The importance is even more so today than when we first talked about crating this exhibit years ago.

Rafael: It was important for Ms. Derfner Judaica Museum To not only -- it was important for Ms. freedman to show the resilience of the community.

How does she do that in this exhibition?

Susan: There are some really beautiful photographs in the show, the exhibition, that show that.

A good example, she has a photograph of children in a kindergarten that was started in Prague in the early 1990's with help from the Jewish community outside Prague.

To see those young children, and she cared very much for young children, to see them having a good time playing.

Another photograph that is a good example is a photograph of a wedding taken -- taking place outside the old new synagogue, also in Prague.

It is literally a community rising from the ashes.

Rafael: From reading some of the things she wrote at the time it seems clear Ms. Freedman Was also trying to capture other things.

She seemed to be very concerned about the trivialization of the Holocaust, the trivialization of Holocaust sites and traditional Jewish communities that suffered so much during the Holocaust.

Talk about that.

Susan: It is a double-edged sword.

When people return to these Jewish sites in Europe as tourists, whether the site of a former synagogue, or exploring the space of a concentration camp, because they are coming to have a learning experience, but there was also, especially in Kraków or Prague, when a café is sited, and they are using Jewish symbols in connection with promoting the tourism industry, there is uneasiness.

She had a way of pointing that out in her photographs.

Rafael: There are also pictures of tourists looking through the old new synagogue and do stuff like that.

It struck me.

Maybe it is not so easy to tell the difference between those who are going for entertainment and those going to these places knowing they are a sacred space, they are hallowed ground.

I am thinking of the photograph in the exhibition of a middle-aged man inside Birkenau concentration camp.

He looks like he is being disrespectful because he is climbing in one of those bunks, but as it turns out, it was one of the youngest members of Schindler's list.

Is it that easy to tell the difference?

Daniel: The gift she has given us here is to use people to tell the story in her images.

How we interpret those images tells us a lot about all of us, it forces us to ask questions, even as you might have confused that particular individual, I think it is important we become aware of our own biases and view.

I think she does that in a way that is powerful.

Rafael: Ms. Freedman, she is a brilliant photographer and I am sorry to confess I did not know about her before this segment.

She also had a fascinating life, a fascinating New Yorker.

Can you give me a brief biography about her life and work beyond this exhibit should?

Susan: Of course.

She is a New York City street photographer, born in 1939 to a Jewish family in the squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

She graduated from the University of Pittsburg.

I think she was a sociology major.

After graduation, quite a free spirit.

She went to Israel.

She was also a good singer.

She sang in cafés in Jerusalem, went to London and Paris.

She was a good writer, too.

She had not even picked up a camera yet.

1964 she comes to the U.S., settles in New York.

Works in ad copy.

She is in the advertising industry.

In 1966, she picks up a camera.

She has a friend or neighbor and suddenly she is smitten.

Rafael: Self-taught?

Susan: Self-taught.

Rafael: She documented policemen, firemen.

It is an amazing life and I am glad you're bringing her to the fore.

In the minute we have left, where exactly is the museum?

If some of our viewers want to look at this, want to participate and view these photographs, do they just have to show up?

Daniel: The Derfner Judaica Museum is in Riverdale in the Bronx.

They can call the museum at 58 1-1000, area code 718, to let us know they are coming.

We can arrange for them to come through the security gate.

They can also go to our website.

The Derfner Judaica Museum Museum -- the Derfner Judaica Museum is a designated Judaica Museum and I want to acknowledge the generosity of Helen and Harold Derfner and our dear friend jay Lieberman.

There are 5000 other pieces of work around our campus and sculpture garden, of all different kinds of art.

Rafael: We have to end it here.

Thank you for this wonderful exhibit should.

I will see you there.

♪ Jack: Good evening, I am Jack Ford.

As part of our ongoing listening in series, we teamed up with the 92nd Street y, to bring you thought-provoking discussions taking place in our city.

Let's listen in on New York colonist Brett Stevens and Rabbi Rubenstein on this candid talk on anti-Semitism, its pervasive nature, and how it is used as a political pawn on both the right and the left.

It is part of our exploring hate initiative.

>> the last time we spoke about this, short of three years ago, there were movements politically on the right and left, demonstrating anti-Semitic leanings.

You wrote an interesting article about the mutation of anti-Semitism, what it had been and what it is becoming.

Can you review and explain why you see that happening?

Rabbi Rubenstein: Anti-Semitism is a little like COVID, a shape shifting virus.

Because over time one mutation does not look exactly like the other, some people claim one mutation has nothing to do with the other.

The history of anti-Semitism begins thousands of years ago, and has a long gestation as a primarily religious hatred.

Then, sometime after the 18th century and enlightenment, transforms into a racialized hatred.

And at some point becomes a political conspiracy theory, which I think is fundamentally what the antisemitic side of Jew hatred really is, a conspiracy theory.

As racial hatred became uncouth, it termed into a national hatred called anti-Zionism.

I see a fundamental continuum between the old-fashioned anti-Semitism of, going back 2000 years ago, to anti-Zionism today, which is an assault on Jews for characteristics that are supposedly especially Jewish -- greed for either the money or land of others, a certain kind of connivingness, and so forth.

This is a point that has been made by a friend of mine, Pamela.

It is a profound point.

Think of anti-Semitism, what is it?

It is a conspiracy theory that argues that Jews are impostors and swindlers.

What did the anti-Semite of the 19th century believe?

He believed Jew, --Jews, who you knew as your neighbor or someone in your town, claimed to be let's say German, but they were not German, they were Semites, they came from somewhere else, they were Middle Eastern foreigners.

How were they swindlers?

They were swindling you out of your industry, finances, and so forth.

There was the allegation of anti-Semitism, these Jews don't come from here and they are swindling us.

What is anti-Zionism?

An allegation the Jews are impostors and swindlers.

>> Power is always part of that.

Rabbi Rubenstein: Just to complete the thought, what does the anti-Zionist state?

These Jews claim they are from the Middle East, but they are from Poland or wherever.

What are they doing in the Middle East?

Swindling the Palestinians out of what is properly Palestinian.

There is a fundamental consonance between these two hatreds that I think is largely amiss.

And the aspect of power is essential.

That somehow, whatever the allegation is about Jews, that they control levers of power that others do not.

Brett: You talked about the obfuscation of the FBI and its inability to say this is an anti-Semitic act.

And that is because it did not fit the description in terms of who the victims were and the villain.

Rabbi Rubenstein: The obfuscation of the FBI bothered me, but less so by the media who should have done better.

The FBI made some idiotic comment that the attack was not directed at the Jewish community because the motive was to spring a terrorist in a nearby jail free.

While why did he not just go into a convenience store?

He went into a synagogue.

You rob banks because that is where the money was.

Willy sutton did not actually say that, but it is a great line.

This guy went into a synagogue because he thought that is where the power was.

The FBI man on the scene was out of his depth, what I found disturbing was the extent to which major media organizations parroted that line for about a week.

Among my Jewish friends, it was all we could talk about that week.

Story after story avoided the fact this was a blatant, aggressive anti-Semitic attack.

What is disturbing to me, when that lunatic went on a rampage in Atlanta with massage parlors, nobody in my profession wasted a minute calling it an anti-Asian attack.

There is a question whether it was anti-Asian.

But maybe, fine.

When George Floyd was murdered, it was unquestionably a racist component.

This was widely trumpeted in the media.

I am not saying that is a bad thing to do, but why is it that anti-Semitism keeps being the hate that Dare not speak its name?

Why are people so reluctant to call out anti-Semitism, particularly when it is anti-Semitism that is not being perpetrated by one of the usual suspects?

Like the guy who assaulted the tree of life synagogue or marchers at Charlottesville?

I do not want to paint with a broad brush, but too many in my profession point out anti-Semitism when it is coming from the right, and are more reluctant to do so when it is coming from not the right, whether it is the left or someone else.

That is a real problem we Jews have in America.

We are experiencing a wave.

We are the largest victims of religiously based hate crimes in the U.S., and you would hardly know it.

Unless you are in Williamsburg, in certain neighborhoods, you would hardly know it on a day-to-day basis.

The extent to which visibly Jewish communities are under threat.

I love those ads through Manhattan which say, if you do not think there is a problem with anti-Semitism, walk around with a yarmulke on your head and see what you discover.

Brett: You pointed out in one of your articles, Jews are perceived as a successful and that is not a good thing from the point of the progressive left.

We are held at fault for that.

How do you combat that?

>> I am really worried and I will use this term "woke," which most people understand what it has come to mean, not what it originally meant.

I am very worried about the rise of "woke" ideology and the way in which, and what it means for the Jewish future in the United States.

One thing that concerns me, it used to be that in America, success was admired.

One of the reasons Jews flourished in the U.S., here in America, when people succeeded on their merits, they were admired.

In Europe when people succeeded on their merits, they were envied.

Tall poppy syndrome.

America, because of a unique Calvinist heritage from the Puritans, that worldly success is seen as a mark of divine favor, America had beyond religious liberties, a culture of admiring success.

In the new woke dispensation, and I am overgeneralizing, the concept of success has been replaced by a concept of privilege.

If you are well off, it is not that you worked from penury to success and crated a thriving business and jobs for people, you are privileged.

Privileged is something woke America wants to attack.

Jews aren't perceived as successful, they are successful.

I do not think I am disclosing a great secret that Jews are an extraordinarily successful minority.

>> You wrote a column about that and framed it differently than most would because most often when we talk about success, people publish lists of Nobel Prize winners.

You had a different and I think proper understanding as to why we Jews are successful.

>> Jews are successful I think because of an experience historically of always having one foot in and one foot outside of the dominant culture.

That is a hypothesis of mine.

>> Though I think it is true.

When you look at some of the medical associations that Jews began, they began because they were not funded by the American Heart Association, for instance.

>> It is a quality of thinking different, which creates skepticism, activism, innovation and so on.

This notion, that when you have privilege you should be penalized, is something that should concern American Jews because American Jews have a lot of success, which is now called privilege.

Another thing which distresses me is the assault on intellectual dependence in the U.S.

It is becoming increasingly difficult, at least in certain areas, on college campuses, in publishing, and other fields, to be the outlier or question a particular orthodoxy.

One of the reasons Jews thrive in academia in the 20th century was the fact so many Jewish scholars were those outliers questioning orthodoxy.

And in the process of overthrowing and orthodoxy created new disciplines, new fields.

When you have an intellectual climate in which thinking differently is considered a form of heresy on an ever increasing number of subjects, this is not going to be favorable terrain for that Jewish habit of questioning, of doubting, of second-guessing.

This country is creating an arid intellectual climate in which that instinct -- it is an instinct not just among Jews, but it has a Jewish character, that instinct will be jeopardized.

A new cultural hegemony has taken over in this country.

I think Jews need to beware.

♪ >> Thanks for tuning into "MetroFocus."

You can take our ward winning content with you wherever you get your podcasts, never miss an episode.

Ask your smart speaker to play "MetroFocus" the podcast.

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♪ >> "MetroFocus" is made possible by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

Sylvia a. and Simon b. programming endowment to fight anti-Semitism.

Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation.

The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund.

Bernard and Denise Schwartz.

Barbara Hope Zuckerberg.

And by Jody and John Arnhold.

Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn foundation.

The Ambrose Monell Foundation.

Estate of Roland Karlen.

Charlotte and David akhert.

Tiger Baron foundation.

Nancy and Morris.

Josh Weston.

♪