On the eve of Yom Kippur, we open the issue with a short introspective fable by Ruben Honigmann about giving—and what we need to credit others with in order to truly connect with them. It’s a story about beggars, tzedakah that may or may not be deserved, and Jewish identity that doesn’t hold water. As a moral, we ask: by taking ourselves too seriously, do we risk becoming pitiful?
Taking ourselves too seriously is a flaw that sometimes accompanies a virtue: a commitment to truth and justice. This adolescent attitude of declaring oneself right against all odds is the driving force behind Eli Hirsch’s short story “Collateral Damage”, which takes us into the world of a New York yeshiva. What happens when a young student steeped in ideals comes up against reality and its little compromises with the truth?
Finally, since some things are unforgivable and it is necessary to draw attention to injustice in order to hope to see it corrected, we are publishing a text by Jan Grabowski and Katarzyna Grabowska, representatives of the new Polish school of Holocaust history. Echoing Elżbieta Janicka’s text on Polish-style Holocaust denial, they sound the alarm about the systematic manipulation and concealment of memory by the Polish government at the Treblinka museum.
