Removed works include Saul Bellow’s ‘Herzog’ and ‘Black, White and Jewish’; no individual reasoning given for books’ removal.
JTA – A global bestseller by a Jewish Holocaust victim; a novel by a beloved and politically conservative Jewish American writer; a memoir of growing up mixed-race and Jewish; and a contemporary novel about a high-achieving Jewish family are among the nearly 700 books a Florida school district removed from classroom libraries this year in fear of violating state laws on sexual content in schools.
The purge of books from Orange County Public Schools, in Orlando, over the course of the past semester is the latest consequence of a conservative movement across the country — and strongest in Florida — to rid public and school libraries of materials deemed offensive. While the vast majority of such challenged and removed books involve race, gender and sexuality, several Jewish books have previously been caught in the dragnet.
The books aren’t offensive. The historical actions they are about are offensive. Repugnant actually. Learning about them means we might be less likely to repeat them. Banning them makes it much more likely. And that is the reason they were banned.
This is not the way.
It wasn’t supposed to be.
There’s no antisemitism. It’s not dangerous equivocating everything as the same all the time. That doesn’t disenfranchise people and take away the power of language. I don’t need to be responsible on the Internet with the knowledge that my understanding of nuance and grey areas may not exist in the general public or potential readers.
