December 15, 2018 Street posters fall 2018: the draft in Israel
This fall there has been an influx of posters from Israeli Haredi activists who are pushing back against the Israeli draft of Orthodox youths. There is no knowing how interested local New York Hasidim are in these issues, but the Israeli activists sure have been churning out posters.
I find this poster particularly illustrative for its shocking use of the holocaust as analogous with the cause against the Israeli draft. The poster reads “The trains already left the station” and promises to stop it with martyrdom. It speaks to how differently the narrative of the holocaust is told among Hasidim than among the rest of Jewry. The book “Hasidism a New History” touched on how differently the Hasidim remembered the holocaust, for example by not observing a remembrance day. In my view, Hasidim think of the holocaust less as a singular event in Jewish history but rather as a most important lesson for a recurring theme of a story of physical and spiritual persecution. This is how the holocaust then comes to be seen as reoccurring in spiritual battles; because the persecution is everywhere and continuous through history. In that view, a dramatic evocation of the holocaust is used to rouse a call to action.