Saturday, April 2, 2011

Light Shines in Darkness: Laurie Skopitz

Under a photo of his family. Source.

This used to be a blog post saluting my friend Rabbi Laurence Skopitz. I later took the blog post, edited it, lengthened it, and submitted it to a new anthology about love on the road. "Love on the Road 2013" edited by Sam Tranum and Lois Kapila is now available at Amazon here. I hope you will have a look. Thank you. And thank you. Rabbi Laurence Skopitz. 


11 comments:

  1. Krystyna, thank you so much for reading and commenting. :-)

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  2. Wow. What a beautiful and moving story. Thank you, as always, for opening up a lovely hole in my brain and heart, where your perfect little words create a real experience. Kisses.

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  3. Robin, thank you for sharing this.

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  4. The amount of intermarriage, or what might be called genetic intermingling in whatever fashion, has always been a forgotten factor, it seems to me. But then from where the old saying, "Scratch a Pole, find a Jew?" The ancestry on both sides is very mixed. Of course I understand that it's the culture, not genes, that matter, but maybe a greater awareness of how mixed Poles and Jews are, not to mention Germans or any other "Aryan," ahem. . . nationalities -- maybe that awareness would do some good, so people would stop being quite so obsessed.

    A great story. I was esp struck by the person who just discovered that the Holocaust "was a Nazi operation." Thanks for the labor of sharing this, and all the good work you've done toward more tolerance.

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  5. Oriana, thanks for your comment.

    The person who made the discovery about the Holocaust was a graduate student in history at an Ivy League university.

    He also discovered that peasants were overworked and powerless. He brought that up in meetings. I don't remember anyone even hearing what he was saying.

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  6. Beautiful writing, Danusha.
    The complexity of the relationship between Poles and Jews puzzles me -- I see more similarities than differences but I am not sure if this is common or if this is just my family, my upbringing.
    I know I want to explore it, I want to write about it.
    In my novel, To Kill the Other, I have a character named Irene -- she is Jewish and she is not Jewish ... we can't tell for sure. What we can tell for sure is that she is an Angel (with real wings). Angel means the one who can create life (and not succumb to death) even under the most difficult circumstances.
    I think you would like this character.

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  7. Danuta, thank you so much for reading and commenting. :-)

    I have to check out a book with an Angel character.

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  8. A beautiful essay in honor of Rabbi Skopitz by Rabbi Michael Herzbrun:

    http://www.bellersonline.com/rabbi/writings/emanuel.html

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    Replies
    1. Do you have a copy of this essay by Michael? The link no longer works. Missing my dad tonight and doing some googling :) I just ordered the anthology btw.

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    2. No, I don't, unfortunately. Maybe someone in his family or his office might have a copy? Good luck in your search.

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Bieganski the Blog exists to further explore the themes of the book Bieganski the Brute Polak Stereotype, Its Role in Polish-Jewish Relations and American Popular Culture.
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