tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post8157036902734025588..comments2023-06-21T10:52:34.013-04:00Comments on Jeremy Rosen's Blog: The IKEA SucahAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17043970242427877089noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-35126558501718716342011-10-17T15:03:51.023-04:002011-10-17T15:03:51.023-04:00Great comment PGrGr...yasher koach!Great comment PGrGr...yasher koach!B.R.http://www.rishonan.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6141014.post-26564657452790395852011-10-12T06:19:38.986-04:002011-10-12T06:19:38.986-04:00Last winter I bought a Hugo boss coat. I bought in...Last winter I bought a Hugo boss coat. I bought in part because I won a voucher for Hugo Boss, but I really love the coat, and I have received lots of compliments on how stylish it is. I have also received quite a few comments, mostly from people a generation before me, along the lines of "Hugo Boss... you know what he did in the war, don't you?" I found these comments to be quite upsetting, as I knew nothing about Hugo Boss's Nazi past when I bought the coat, and I thought nothing of the name other than as a fashion label.<br /><br />However, it has not taken long for me to find the following information, quoted, in this case from a Telegraph.co.uk article published just three weeks ago:<br /><br />The company [Hugo Boss] said on its website it wished to "express its profound regret to those who suffered harm or hardship at the factory run by Hugo Ferdinand Boss under National Socialist rule".<br />After the war Boss was tried and fined for his involvement in Nazi structures.<br /><br /><br /><br />As far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to have any more reservations about buying a Hugo Boss coat than I am about driving my VW car, or employing a Polish builder. What's done is done, and if I deny myself access to the best in consumer goods, who, really, will suffer from my decision?<br /><br />I was thinking about this in particular over Yom Kippur, when I read something that the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote. I'm going to quote him directly here, because he says it far more eloquently in full, than I can do in summary form:<br /><br />In the last month of his life, Moses gave the Israelites an<br />unusual command. He said, “Do not hate an Egyptian for<br />you were strangers in his land” (Deuteronomy 23:8). What<br />did he mean? The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites and tried<br />to kill every male child. Was that a reason not to hate them?<br />Surely the opposite was the case.<br />What Moses was doing was very profound. He was telling<br />the next generation that if they continued to hate Egyptians,<br />they would still be slaves – to the past, to resentment, to a<br />sense of grievance. Moses would have taken the Israelites out of Egypt but he would not have taken Egypt out of the<br />Israelites. He was stating one of the deepest truths of all: If<br />you want to be free, you have to let go of hate.<br />That is a message we must insist on at every opportunity.<br />Antisemitism matters not because Jews are Jews but because<br />Jews are human. You cannot deny someone else’s humanity<br />without endangering your own.PGrGrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06867791815963122631noreply@blogger.com