On Friday, Jewish actress Natalie Portman spoke to UK magazine The Independent about her directorial debut “A Tale of Love and Darkness” and…the Holocaust. You may be unaware that Portman’s own great-grandparents were killed in Auschwitz, and she even played Anne Frank in a 1997 Broadway adaptation of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
So, it came as a bit of a shocker when Portman stated that maybe the Jewish community is a little too stuck on the Holocaust:
“I think a really big question the Jewish community needs to ask itself, is how much at the forefront we put Holocaust education. Which is, of course, an important question to remember and to respect, but not over other things. We need to be reminded that hatred exists at all times and reminds us to be empathetic to other people that have experienced hatred also. Not used as a paranoid way of thinking that we are victims.”
Portman isn’t the first one to make this claim. Last year, Kveller writer Tamar Fox also wrote about how she doesn’t want to raise her children to be afraid of anti-Semitism “at every corner,” and also felt her education was too focused on this one event, saying, “I just don’t want fear of the Holocaust to be the driving force in their lives.”
What do you think? Do you agree with Portman that we’re too focused on the Holocaust? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
