A season for healing: Reflections on the Holocaust [Paperback]

Anne Richardson Roiphe (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Certain to evoke strong reactions, this impassioned, meditative essay by Roiphe, an American Jewish journalist, is rooted in her belief that Jews need to come to terms with the Holocaust, to face their anger, to accept the Nazi genocide both as a specifically Jewish tragedy and as a human event, part of the mass slaughter of the 20th century. Around this central premise, Roiphe, whose books include Lovingkindness and Up the Sandbox , builds chapters on Jews' relations with Christians, blacks, Poles and the Vatican; Russian anti-Semitism and the Soviet conflict with Jewish emigration; Jews in American politics; and the tensions that divide Arabs and Israelis. On each emotionally charged issue, Roiphe strives to understand how opposing sides feel, to weight contrary claims and interests. Her objectivity makes this challenging, important essay a beacon in the discussion of controversies that have long divided Jewsamong themselves and from the world at large.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Summit Books; 1St Edition edition (1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067166753X
• ISBN-13: 978-0671667535
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,092,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Dealing with the unspeakable, April 5, 2007

By 

Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Season for Healing: Reflections on the Holocaust (Paperback)

Jews and Christians alike know that in the time of the Holocaust the world looked the other way. After the Holocaust Jewish life has gone on. Elias Canetti said that one could not say God anymore. Religion, arguably, is an attempt to make the universe humanly significant. One cannot conceive of a way to bind sin, punishment, and the Holocaust together. One of the products of the disaster is that attendance at the synagogues is growing and the Orthodox movement has increased sevenfold. Also, the State of Israel was established as a sort of world atonement.

When Jews lose connection with impoverished people they become a sort of broken link to the American dream. Currently there is much hard feeling between Jews and African-Americans. This is regrettable since Jews were in the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman died in Mississippi.

In Poland today Jewish life exists only in photographs. At the start of World War II three and a half million Jewish people lived there. Nearly all of them perished. Poles were victims, Jewish protectors, and Jewish betrayers. In 1946 forty-two Jewish survivors of the camps were murdered in Kielce.

After the Russian Revolution Jews had a brief resurgence. Over time, though, there was folk anti-semitism prevailing. Ten public institutions in Israel are devoted to the Holocaust. Jewish-American politics have been altered by the Holocaust.

The author presents a cogent discussion of the many ways Jewish life in America has changed and been recast since the days of the Holocaust and the long aftermath of coming to terms with, (trying to understand), that hideous event.