Сначала новая история. В XIX жил в Луизиане еврей Джуда Филипп Бенджамин, юрист и плантатор. К своему еврейству он относился более чем равнодушно, даже женился на католичке, однако от веры предков никогда не отрекался. Это, однако, не помешало ему сделать успешную политическую карьеру: в 1852 году он был избран в Сенат США, а когда началась гражданская война - стал сначала генеральным прокурором, затем секретарем по военным делам, а в 1862 г. — государственным секретарем конфедерации южан - т.е., если память мне не изменяет, стал на тот момент наиболее успешным и высокопоставленным в западном мире некрещеным евреем.
Ну а теперь - история новейшая:
About 15 years ago, a large synagogue in Northern California installed a set of windows in the religious school engraved with the names of some 175 prominent Jews, from biblical figures to famous actors. One of them, sandwiched between Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, was Judah Benjamin, the most prominent Jewish official in the Confederacy...
The inclusion of Benjamin’s name on the wall didn’t arouse much protest until 2013, about eight years after the installation at Peninsula Temple Sholom, a Reform congregation in Burlingame. That was when a congregant named Howard Wettan listened to a podcast about the Civil War as his daughter attended Hebrew school in the building. “I connected the dots,” Wettan said. “I saw the name once more and said there’s something really wrong with that.”
At first, Peninsula Temple Sholom responded to Wettan’s complaint by doubling down on the wall as a teaching tool. Wettan would come to religious school classes and teach the students about Benjamin and the Civil War. But after the August 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was sparked by the removal of a Lee statue, Wettan again asked the synagogue to erase Benjamin’s name.
After some back-and-forth, Wettan requested at a synagogue board meeting in December 2018 that the name be removed. In the end, a task force was formed to address the issue, and Benjamin’s name was covered up with tape. Some months later, the synagogue began the process of contracting an artist to replace the name.
In the end, the congregation opted to keep the wall but replace three windows bearing what they deemed to be problematic names at a cost of approximately $7,500. Along with Benjamin, the congregation is removing the names of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, a prominent Jewish musician who died in 1994, and the actor Dustin Hoffman. Both Hoffman and Carlebach have been accused of harassment and assault by several women, in Carlebach’s case posthumously.
Комментарии, полагаю, излишни. Вернее, заголовка и приведенного выше фото в качестве таковых вполне достаточно.
И да, самое дно в этой истории - разумеется, про Карлебаха. Поскольку обвинения в его адрес мало того что нигде и никогда не были доказаны, но были озвучены только после его смерти - когда певец уже ничего не мог ответить.