So Long, Sassoon
Today, Vidal Sassoon passed away.
You knew he was a world renowned hair stylist and fashion icon.
Did you know he was a Zionist and proud Jew?
Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen and the rest had instilled a Zionist zeal in Betty and many others, and when Israel was formed in1948, Sassoon eagerly joined the Palmach – the elite fighting force of the Haganah paramilitary – to help defend the fledgling state. He wanted to – and did – see action: “I wasn’t going over there to sit in an office … I thought if we don’t fight for a piece of land and make it work, then the whole Holocaust thing was a terrible waste. But this way at least we got a country out of it.”
Sassoon might have stayed in Israel but for a telegram from Betty, who had remarried, saying his stepfather had suffered a heart attack, and they needed him to earn money. Hairdressing was all he knew, and reluctantly he returned to the profession that he’d always felt ambivalent towards. “I loved the fact that there was lots of pretty girls coming in and out; I didn’t love hair. When I came back, though, I decided to give it my all.” Israel had changed him, he says. “The sense of what we’d done gave me an enormous confidence, and I really felt as if I belonged.
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As the interview comes to an end, we return briefly to Israel and whether the country today is the one he envisaged in 1948. Sassoon says they had no illusions at the time that “many in the Arab world would be anti-Israel and would like to push you into the sea … Now we have a million and a quarter Arabs living in Israel, with all democratic rights. That’s really good.” On the other hand, Fatah’s recent deal with Hamas was “very unforgiving” and has “put peace back”, he believes.
Reflecting on himself as a Jew, he says, “in the final analysis, because of all the things I have been through, I feel very humble, in a way, that we produced so many incredible people, and there’s only 13 million of us in the world, and we still keep producing.
“Essentially, I just have a certain pride in the tribe.”
ϟ From Antisemite to Hasidic Jew
Pawel Bromson grew up in Poland where he habitually engaged in anti-Semitic activities and, like many of his countrymen, blamed the Jews for the country’s woes.
As a pastime, he and his friends even boarded a train to Auschwitz and vandalized the former concentration camp, where they shouted at staff members that “the genocide should have been bigger,” The National Post reported on Tuesday.
“I wasn’t just anti-Semitic, I was anti-everyone,” Bromson said.
However, Bromson’s story is not that of an anti-Semite prototype.
Fourteen years ago he discovered that his grandparents were Jewish. “I thought my life was finished. It was a catastrophe,” he said.
Like many Jewish families who had survived the Holocaust in Poland, Bromson’s parents hid their religion from their children in order to protect them from persecution, noted the Post.
Over time, Bromson not only accepted the truth regarding his Jewish identity, but also took steps in converting to Judaism, eventually becoming a Hassidic Jew.
When asked about his past, he responds, “Please, don’t ask me. I try to forget, but I can’t.”
He says that while he does still feel comfortable walking around Poland, his long beard and black hat sometimes cast him as an outsider and draw the attention of his fellow Poles.
Deborah Shanowitz, program director at the Chabad of Westmount, said the centre decided to bring Bromson to Montreal because he has a very unusual story.
“He was a neo-Nazi who hated Jews and all minorities,” she noted. “After embarking on a path of finding out what it is to be Jewish, he decided to go back and be like his great-grandfather.”
That is the exact message we are trying to convey while discussing Conservative and Reform Judaism.
Although Orthodoxy does not view those movements as Torah Judaism or Halachically correct; a person with a Jewish mother, is always a Jew, regardless of which denomination they affiliate with.
Jewish identity is NOT defined by level of observance.
