Dear Revealer readers,

A few weeks ago, I saw the remarkable Broadway play Leopoldstadt, a show about multiple generations of one Viennese Jewish family. The first act opens in 1889 as children are decorating a Christmas tree. This is an assimilated Jewish family (“We worship culture,” one character proclaims), and the patriarch even converted to Catholicism to integrate more fully into Austrian society. But the family has not renounced Judaism either. They may have a Christmas tree, but they also host a beautiful Passover seder in the spring. They are cosmopolitan, well-educated, and affluent. They love Vienna and several in the family are convinced Austria celebrates the contributions Jews have made to art, music, literature, science, and psychology (they mention Freud more than once).

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

One family member, a mathematician, is more skeptical. As the play unfolds with no intermission to add to the show’s intensity (act two is in 1900, act 3 in 1924, act 4 in 1938, and act 5 in 1955), the audience witnesses the entire family learn that assimilation offered no protection from the Jew-hatred that festered just beneath the surface until it overflowed in the most horrific ways imaginable. Even before the Nazis rise to power, the audience watches the family patriarch discover that, despite converting, many Austrians would never see him as anything other than a Jew.

As the play inches closer to 1938, I worried that some in the audience might think this family should have seen what was coming, as if they could have known what we sitting in the theater know, a phenomenon literature scholar Michael André Bernstein describes as “backshadowing.” But Leopoldstadt shows how difficult it was for Jews to flee – the extraordinary expense, the unwillingness of other countries, including the United States, to accept Jewish refugees, and the horrible choices some faced to leave their families and to go to another country that they hoped would not also be invaded by the Nazis. The show makes clear that most European Jews had no viable options, and for those who did, things rarely went well because most of continental Christian Europe was either complicit or passive bystanders in the Nazi’s Final Solution.

Leopoldstadt is a play that has stayed with me, lingering in my thoughts longer than most. One reason I can’t seem to shake the play is because events of the present day remind me of the show. I do not simply mean the rise in antisemitism, nor am I suggesting that I see another Holocaust on our horizon. But I do see a similar type of hate and scapegoating among powerful, elected officials. While I used to roll my eyes at Marjorie Taylor Green’s comments or Ron DeSantis’s diatribes, I find myself deeply concerned by their willingness to target vulnerable populations, like transgender Americans, and their legions of supporters who, like Nazis and January 6 insurrectionists, seem poised for violence. Just recently, DeSantis demanded that public colleges and universities in Florida hand over transgender students’ medical files to his office. And across the country, from Mississippi to Utah, state legislatures are passing laws making it illegal for transgender adolescents to access medical services to support their transition. The legislative dehumanization and targeting of transgender Americans is well underway, as are physical attacks against transgender women and, increasingly, drag queens. As these legislative and bodily assaults escalate, the number of bystanders who have not protested them continues to come into clearer, and frightening, focus.

With these thoughts in mind, I turn to this issue of the Revealer and the pressing matters it addresses. Several articles in our March issue consider what it means to identify one’s enemies, how political action can make a difference, and why we should consider when, or if, forgiveness against those who have wronged us is appropriate. The issue opens with the newest installment in Kaya Oake’s “Not So Sorry” column with the article “Fetishizing Forgiveness,” where she reflects on how the pressures to forgive people, institutions, and officials can allow injustice and abuse to continue. Next, in “In the Amazon, Religious Women Lead the Way,” Pilar Timpane profiles a Catholic nun who faces death threats for her activism to protect Brazil’s indigenous communities and their land. Then, in “What Does BDS Really Mean?,” Adele Oltman, an advocate for Palestinians, suggests that BDS, the movement to “boycott, divest, and sanction” Israel, does not actually do anything to improve Palestinians’ lives. And in “Tipping Points,” Toby Cox offers a reflection on how the climate crisis is making the “religious ecology” – the interconnected lives of humanity, animals, and vegetation – abundantly, and painfully, clear.

The issue also moves away from issues of bystanders and political action, and takes a look at two new books that we believe will be of interest to Revealer readers. In “Searching for God, One Bestseller at a Time,” Daniel Burke interviews religion professor Stephen Prothero about his new book God the Bestseller, which tells the story of a religion editor who was responsible for many of the 20^th century’s most popular books about religion. And, in an excerpt from the new book Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials, Jennifer Caplan explores how Jewish humor has changed over time.

Our March issue also features a conversation with Jennifer Caplan for the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Jewish Comedy.” We discuss how Jews developed a reputation as a funny people, if antisemitism has contributed to Jewish humor, and how Jewish humor is changing as the image of American Jews diversifies. You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

As I reflect on the many concerns our March issue raises, I return to my thoughts about Leopoldstadt. Today, we face what might feel like an avalanche of attacks on people’s dignity, fueled by an overwhelming number of people who seem fine with the rise of fascism and with taking away people’s democratic rights. But we are not in a fascist country – yet. Given the rapid speed of our media, we do have awareness of what is happening. We know who and what we should be protesting if we want to protect democracy, trans people and other targets of hate, and the teaching of history itself. Let us act with that knowledge and with the urgency our current situation demands. And may we not be passive bystanders.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.