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Remembering not to forget

Highlights from the third annual Gates of Chai

Remembering not to forget

Highlights from the third annual Gates of Chai

“And God created heaven and earth. And God created at one point, man and woman. “And the reason is very beautiful. It’s the reason that we should give any fanatic so that he or she would understand that there is no way to humiliate another human being simply because that being is not what they are. So, our commentaries say, God created one man Adam and one woman Eve, so that at no point in time and space, any person could say, ‘I am superior to you.’ Because we all have the same grandparents. “That is beautiful — if we all have the same grandparents — and believe me, Adam and Eve were not Jewish. I always felt sorry for Adam, the only person who never suffered from an Oedipus complex.” 

As a crowd of 3,000 waited to see and hear the third annual Gates of Chai speaker in September, Brite Prof. Toni Cravens asked all the 15-year-olds in the crowd to raise their hands. Hundreds lifted them — and learned that was the age the speaker — Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel — was taken along with his family to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1945. He was the only family member to survive. A half-century later, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate warned the Fort Worth crowd of the “dangers of fanaticism.”

“I believe that if there is anything that could disarm fanaticism, it is learning. It’s education. Whatever the essential answer to urgent and dangerous problems is, surely education is a major component. Without it, nothing is possible. Without it, there is no culture, no civilization, no compassion, no humanity,” he said. “And so, when we are together, teachers and students, and we are involved in the same endeavor, to learn what ancient sources have kept for us, individually and collectively, is something that we should be grateful for.”