Julie Gray's Blog: The True Adventures of Gidon Lev, page 2

Sorry we haven't updated our blog in some time! Gidon and I have been busy not only on Tiktok, where Gidon has 362K followers, but also teaching and speaking about Gidon's experiences. Gidon has spoken via Zoom and in person to dozens of groups in the past few months.

For his 87th birthday, Gidon went indoor skydiving, which made a great Tiktok! And in other exciting news, The True Adventures of Gidon Lev is now available as a podcast and is available everywhere you get your podcasts. The podcast is a different version of the book, with lots of extras, including Gidon reading from his journals, gorgeous music and even fx! Despite such a crazy schedule, Gidon is doing very well and really enjoying this chapter of his life.

We'll be back with more updates when we can!

In recent weeks, Gidon's Tiktok account has grown exponentially. And with it, antisemitic comments and hate. But not just that. Every time there is a variant of Covid, a new wave of people come forth on Tiktok comparing vaccination mandates to the Holocaust. It's grown quite predictable, really.

The comparison is more than tasteless and disgraceful, it is also categorically ridiculous.

Recently, yet another Tiktok creator made the comparison, and Gidon and I, as per usual, rebutted it.

In less than 24 hours, the Tiktok creator of the video sent us a message apologizing. I will respect her privacy here by not posting what she said, but in essence, she apologized that her content hurt Gidon yet doubled down on the "parallels" between vaccine mandates and the Holocaust. This is my reply to her.

It is nice to hear from you! This is Julie, by the way. It's not easy for Gidon to type up replies or comments at his age, but he's over my shoulder all the time, trust me!

Unfortunately, Gidon's grandparents did not live through the war, unlike your grandparents. His grandmother Alice was stripped naked and shot in front of a ditch. His other grandmother Theresie died weeks before being sent to a concentration camp. Her headstone was used to pave a public square. His grandfather Alfred died in a concentration camp, in agonizing pain. His grandfather Fritz was killed in Treblinka in a gas chamber. So the pain is bone-deep for Gidon and so many others. He has six kids, for example – and fifteen grandchildren – and they all live with what happened to their family every day.

We are living in strange times! It's essential to pay attention and be aware of not only what is going on but who's telling you what is going on. We all need to be very attuned to how media influences our thoughts, opinions, and even actions. There is a great book called The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu that might really interest you; I found it fascinating. Another great book you might like is It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis.

Gidon and I are both vaccinated and happily so. I'm glad people around Gidon are vaccinated; he is so precious to me and has already survived impossible conditions. I don't subscribe to the idea that the vaccination is some evil plot – actually, Google and Facebook worry me much more than vaccinations! If you are worried about your freedoms and liberty, turn off your TV and put your smartphone down right this minute. We are all connected and have been for some time. Thinking independently for yourself has never been more challenging.

The history of Nazi Germany and antisemitism is so terrible and tragic that it is beyond heartbreaking. It's not just that comparing that time to this time is distasteful; it's also inaccurate.

I think that many people are mashing up George Orwell's 1984 with the events of WWII. Big difference. Both terrible dystopias but on different ends of the spectrum – and one speculative and imagined, the other is quite real.

What are the most terrible things that we fear? For some reason, the vaccine has taken the place of all of those things in people's minds. There aren't any substantive historical parallels between vaccine mandates and the Holocaust is the thing. Manipulation and fear are standard procedures for the media, right, left, and center. It's about getting and keeping your attention.

It's not just that your Tiktok offended Gidon and so many others – it's that it's barking up the wrong tree entirely. I know that's very "edgy" to say anything about Hitler and the Holocaust – but that not only creates real hurt and harm for Jews and others, but it is also historically inaccurate.

I feel that social responsibility is essential, but I also get that people want to enjoy personal liberty and freedoms. That's a conversation worth having in an intelligent, informed, philosophical way. Dropping Hitler and the Nazis into that conversation demeans our ability to do just that.

Many people have told Gidon and me that it is ridiculous to use Tik Tok as a platform to reach out to younger generations about the story of Gidon’s life, Holocaust education, and standing up and speaking out against hate and intolerance.

It’s true; Tik Tok has a reputation for being a silly (understatement) platform with very little content of merit. You see, Tik Tok is a platform on which anyone can be creative in 60, 30, or even 15 seconds. It democratizes content, which means anything goes. There is no shortage of vapid, sometimes even offensive, or just plain sad stuff.Tik Tok is a content creators platform — not sharers, like Facebook, and not image-groomers/FOMO-fomenters like Instagram. (Yes, I’m on Instagram too, and I openly admit its somewhat facile utility.)But the good news is that more than a few creators on Tik Tok share valuable information in very creative ways. I have come upon many accounts that are well worth following. @Jewishunpacked is definitely an excellent account to follow, as is @HolocaustEducation On the lighter side of things, @Khaby.lame is hysterical, and both @Historyfordummies and @the.historynerd are both #wins for history buffs. And there are many more. You just have to keep swiping up. We are most certainly not the first in this space; Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert and her grandson Dov have amassed over one million followers on Tik Tok.In The True Adventures, I wrote a lot about the fate of Gidon’s family and what Gidon’s personal experience was like. But it was impossible not to cast the net much more widely and talk about the conditions that led to the Holocaust. Especially given the sorry state of affairs in the 21st century: The sharp rise in antisemitism and nationalism, hate, ignorance, and intolerance toward minorities.I was pushed and pulled by an overarching worry: What happens when the last Holocaust survivors are gone from this earth? What will we do then?Gidon will be 87 in March 2022. Every day that I have with him is a gamble and a gift. By writing a book about his life, I have inherited a responsibility and adopted a mission. Gidon may not be with us for as long as I’d like, but if my luck holds out, I will be around for a few more decades. And I’m not going to stop reaching out, talking about hate, its consequences, and its antidotes.

Spoiler: Hatred antidoes include but are not limited to history, empathy, tolerance, productive and positive discourse.

Holocaust museums worldwide have tried everything: video exhibits, participatory experiences, shocking photos, impressive displays, and breath-taking design. It hasn’t worked. Antisemitism is back. (In fact, it never really went away.) Check out this video by Unpacked for a primer about antisemitism’s history — and trajectory.We can no longer rely only on museums or educational institutions to teach these lessons, hard as they have tried to reach out and engage. We must go where the people are: Youtube, Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, or on whatever Next New Social Media thing.

We MUST update, innovate, collaborate and reach out about not just Holocaust education but understanding history full stop, cultivating more empathy, and standing up against hate in all its forms.

At 86 years old, Gidon isn’t really able to make a Tik Tok go viral — unless he stars in it — and that is just what he did, with my help and that of a fantastic content creator and strategist. Is it silly? Maybe. But this Tik Tok went viral, with over 273.7K views and thousands of warm, grateful, and kind comments, thanking Gidon for answering questions. Yes, we got some potshots from some “clout chasing” idiots, tossing out some incredibly mean and strange replies, but they were blocked and reported for hate speech. I didn’t let Gidon see those comments, and I must stress, they have been in a tiny minority. I am learning, though, that these trolls use a kind of coded language in their attempts not to get banned. “Jesuits” instead of “Jews” and things like that. My take away though, is that because 99.9% of our followers have been grateful and interested — we’re going to keep on going.Do you think the Holocaust could happen again?Gidon gets asked this question almost every day on Tik Tok. The answer is “Yes.” Sort of.With our smartphones and social media, no — that kind of industrialized, state-sanctioned, ultra-organized killing apparatus would be easily detected today. We live in a different era.But — yes. The conditions that made the Holocaust possible are very much present in the world today. The internet, which might have very quickly revealed the horrors of the Holocaust, has been weaponized to spread hate, fear, and disinformation and is not powerful enough to take on a totalitarian state like China where Uighurs are simply hidden from the global eye. Because social media was much less evolved at the time, the atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda were largely covered by news media only. Even when IRL footage got out — some Serb, Croat, and Bosnians actually videoed many of their most atrocious acts — what did the world do in response? Not enough. With so much sensational media grabbing at our attention, briefly, we might pay attention to footage of Afghans clinging to planes. But other slow-motion events, like state-sponsored opposition silencing (and murder), exclusionary laws, arms build-ups on borders, an increasingly hobbled NATO, etc. passes us by as uninteresting. Yet, these seemingly glacial movements can lead to gross human rights violations, destruction, and hate. To many, the Nazis were refreshing in their destructive ways. Make Germany great again! Restore the economy! Put those Jewish interlopers in their place! The Jews will not replace us!

Stay numb and carry on. Everything is pointless.

Tik Tok is a strange, sprawling landscape of cultures and sub-cultures that intersect, compete, compliment, and do battle with one another. Here and there are bright spots of light; who doesn’t like to see a puppy chasing a duck? And there are dark swathes of irredeemably dumb or depressing stuff. But there are also teenagers in Indonesia showing off their dance moves. And there’s this 86 year-old Holocaust survivor getting his message out in ways he never thought possible. And there are people responding.

It has been an action-packed summer for Gidon and me so far! So much has been going on!

In June, Gidon took me traveling in the Galil region of Northern Israel and we spent a couple of lovely days at Vered HaGalil where we heard the jackals yipping at night and saw the lights twinkling on Lake Kinneret. We walked through the Hula Valley Nature Preserve, went to Kiryat Shmone and visited Tsfat which was as magical as I had imagined, and of course stopped by to visit four of Gidon's 15 grandchildren near Acre.

Only a few days ago, cute little Niri was born, making Gidon a great-grandfather two times over! In Hebrew, great-grandfather is "saba raba." Gidon couldn't be prouder.

Our really big news is that filmmaker and director Yaniv Rokah arrived in Israel in late June and began filming for the documentary about Gidon and me. It is definitely nerve-wracking to be filmed but Yaniv and his crew made us comfortable as they rode around with us as we delivered flowers, went swimming, did our errands and as Gidon volunteered teaching English for the Jaffa Institute. Talk about a True Adventure!

Yaniv is the director of the award winning short film The Black Hat as well as Queen Mimi, a feature documentary, so we are in very good hands!

We also went to a book fair of local Israeli writers that was held in the Dizengoff Center and met lots of new people and made new friends. In fact, we are going to visit Northern Israel once again, in the Misgav area, to visit with Israeli writer Debbie Shafrir Keret (in the photo below.)

We are attending the Docaviv Film Festival virtually - in Israel we can go to theaters now but it's SO hot lately that Gidon and I have been watching the ,Docaviv films online. Yesterday we saw ,The Meaning of Hitler and let me tell you, we were both very shaken up by it. This evening we plan to select another film and so on until July 14th, so we'll be busy!

Also in June, Gidon was interviewed by the amazing, kind Les Glassman about his Holocaust experience and that can be viewed on Youtube.

I have been teaching classes for writers on Zoom which has been really fun; I'll be adding more classes as time progresses.

If you have already read The True Adventures but didn't get a chance to leave us a review on Amazon or Goodreads, we would really appreciate it if you would take a moment to do so. Every positive review is a very good thing.

I was so proud to have been interviewed ALLi's Inspirational Indie Authors Podcast about the process of writing The True Adventures. I hope you enjoy it!

Watch this incredible interview with Gidon and the wonderful Dr. Les Glassman.

Watch this incredible interview with Gidon and the wonderful Dr. Les Glassman.

You're based in Tel Aviv, right? Through no fault of yours, there is an international campaign of "boycott, divestment and sanctions" against your government and economy, which unfortunately is a picket line I can't cross. I wish your citizens all the best in changing the government's course of action on respect for international law and human rights conventions to which it is a signatory. We in the US are certainly doing our part to correct our government's complicity and enabling of these abuses.

As a Jewish woman and denizen of Israel, I am familiar with BDS and its aims. I expect that after this conversation, you will destroy your cell phone, many of its apps as well as your computer immediately as these technologies were made with the help of Israeli technology. Also, be sure to refuse for yourself and your family any medical advances and research provided by Israeli universities and innovators. Take it a step further by refusing to hear Israeli stories, drown out Jewish voices, and reduce Palestinians to children with no agency and dignity of their own. Certainly, a person as evil as myself - through no fault of my own, has NO business helping Palestinians express their hopes, fears, and feelings.

Because here's what you don't know about me: I have lived in Israel for ten years. During that time, I have marched with Combatants for Peace, volunteered with Amnesty International, the Middle East Peace Initiative, and Kids For Peace. I have engaged with countless dialogue/encounter groups with Palestinians and traveled extensively in the West Bank. Ending the occupation is something that very many other Israelis and I are involved in on a grassroots level every single day. We have an intractable government - I've gone to so many anti-Bibi demonstrations surrounded by thousands of Israelis - and we are working for change. I have spent hours this week on Clubhouse, listening to Palestinians tell their stories - and Israelis too - and speaking about what we can do to affect change.

But that's just me, as an individual - and though there are many people like me in Israel, there are also many who feel and behave differently. But we have something in common. We are Jews living in the Jewish state—a country barely 73 years old, founded with the idea that Jews deserve the right to self-determination. When the country was founded, it was based on the flawed idea that the people already living here would just drift into the periphery willingly. We were wrong. That was wrong. We, today, living in the third generation of this country are dealing with the inheritance of flawed thinking and, yes, sometimes stupid or even cruel acts. We are also living with being attacked from within and without continually. In the past 30 years, there have been 171 suicide bombings in Israel. That doesn't mention the stabbings, shootings, and other acts of violence. The intifadas left Israelis with zero faith or trust in peace. Hezbollah, on our northern border daily threatens to annihilate us. Palestinians in the West Bank suffer from corrupt leadership, the encroachment of fanatic Jewish settlers, an Israeli right-wing government, and a paucity of their own leadership, tangible hope, educational or life opportunities. This situation is the very definition of "tragedy." The number of vested foreign interests in this land have turned this conflict into a proxy war for power and influence, using ordinary people as pawns. Your country, the US of A, is one of these vested interests. I suggest you boycott America, frankly.

If this is an issue you feel strongly about, I suggest that you be the change you want to see in the world and walk away from such a blunt and ill-used club as BDS, which, apparently, influenced you to, without bothering to ask more about me, write me off immediately, and by dint of that, to write off Israelis as a whole. If you believe in peace and justice, then follow in the footsteps of dialogue, respect, and understanding. The claims of BDS are extreme and, in many cases, ill-informed and just wrong. It is widely seen as an antisemitic organization. That's a picket line that you DO want to cross.

p.s. here is a handy list of Israel inventions, innovations and discoveries that you can also boycott.

p.s.s. here is how BDS helps Palestinians.