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Eagle buries news of Nazi-inspired attack
4.17.06
The Berkshire Eagle buried a week-old story about an anti-Semitic attack on Sinai Academy in Pittsfield, Mass., the only Jewish day school in the Berkshires, on the last page of its local news section today.
On a day when the paper of record of the Berkshires saw fit to run a story about the return of ballroom dancing to the Masonic Temple in downtown Pittsfield on its front page, the Eagle finally got around to reporting that a swastika, the logo of Nazi Germany, was carved into a playground slide at the school last Tuesday, the day before the Jewish festival of Passover.
The five-paragraph story, {"Swastika carved into school slide")
included no comments from Pittsfield police or anyone in Pittsfield government or from the Pittsfield community at large. The only quotation in the story came from a letter that the school board wrote to parents.
Nor did the story go to any lengths to put the swastika into historical context -- there was no mention of Nazis, and the only use of the term "anti-Semitism" was in the quotation from the letter from the school board and in a paraphrase from the letter quoting a statistic from the Anti Defamation League.
Nor did the story make the important point that the incident's proximity to the Easter holiday, as well as to Passover, is equally or more disturbing, as throughout history it has been at or near Easter that the worst incidents of anti-Semitism have been unleashed. Jews have a collective memory of having to lay low or hide around Easter, a time when pogroms were historically launched after having been incited by reactionary religious leaders, often at the behest of communal or governmental leaders.
It's shocking to think that in this era not the mayor of a small city, nor any communal or religious leaders, have spoken out against this evidence of religious hatred in our midst, and that Jews are left to their own devices to publicize and condemn an attack with Nazi-like overtones.
And it's incredibly sad that the people of the Berkshires cannot rely on the paper of record to report such news in a timely fashion, nor to give it the attention it deserves.
Thanks for this, Seth. I was actually pleased the Eagle made ANY mention of it. My kids attend Sinai and I'm glad you are shedding light on how serious an act of hatred it is, especially aimed at children preschool age through fifth grade.
Juliane Hiam, www.bimopolitics.com
4/17/2006
I think she means www.bimbopolitics.com.
4/17/2006
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