Rabbi Held Hostage in Texas Synagogue Comments After School Board Bans Holocaust Novel: ‘It’s Shocking’
Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, whose Texas synagogue was besieged by anti-Semitic violence earlier this month, expressed shock Thursday after a Tennessee school board removed the Holocaust graphic novel Maus from its curriculum.
The McMinn County School Board removed the culturally salient work from cartoonist Art Spiegelman earlier this month, but the story only began to gain traction on Thursday, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The school board expressed concerns about the language and images in the Pulitzer winner.
Cytron-Walker joined The Lead with host Jake Tapper to discuss the removal of the book from classrooms:
It’s an incredible volume, and I had a chance to hear Art Spiegelman speak when I was at the University of Michigan. He’s incredible, the work is incredible. There’s definitely conversation about what is appropriate for what age level, and maturity level, but the idea that you would ban an incredible work like Maus, which not only depicts his father’s experience during the Holocaust, but also gives his accounts of living with a Holocaust survivor. It’s such a powerful volume. And it’s shocking. It’s really, really shocking that this book would be singled out, especially over things like language, when the content is so valuable.
Tapper noted that the book was not banned, per se, but was removed from the curriculum. He then shared a statement from Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who had decried the removal of Maus from schools in McMinn County.
Cohen said, “The unanimous decision of the McMinn County School Board to ban the graphic novel Maus from its curriculum is another unfortunate and embarrassing example of close-mindedness. It’s also censorship and typical of a trend we’re seeing around the country of right-wing politicians attempting to shield themselves from the painful truths of history.”
Cohen added, “Art Spiegelman’s novel opens minds to the history of the Nazi genocide we’re remembering on today’s anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps in 1945.”
Tapper asked Cytron-Walker for his reaction to the statement from Cohen. Cytron-Walker stated:
The way that I’ve talked about it with my congregation is just that acknowledgement that we have to be honest about our history. We have to acknowledge that in the Jewish community, if you go back into the history, we had people, Jews, rabbis, who were supportive of slavery. And we had Jews and rabbis who were opposed to slavery. And fortunately, right, we’ve come out where we are and the Jewish community has been incredible advocates for others in many respects.
Cytron-Walker concluded, “And I think it’s really, really important for us to be able to share and talk about how anti-Semitism that is built upon lies and untruths, and we need to share that truth, and we need to be able to share the reality of all of our histories.”
Watch above, via CNN.
