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APRIL 13, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
A public high school in Florida has
removed an illustrated adaptation of
Anne Frank’s diary from its library. It is the
second known instance of this particular
edition of the famous Holocaust book
being swept up by conservatives
seeking to purge schools of literature
they deem inappropriate.

The principal’s office of Vero Beach
High School, which is located in a
community on Florida’s east coast,
recently decided to remove “Anne
Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation”
from its school library, according to
Cristen Maddux, a spokesperson for
the Indian River County school district.

Maddux said the book was determined
to be “not age appropriate.”
Last year, a school district in Texas
ordered its librarians to remove the
same book before reversing course a
week later following public outcry. Other
books about the Holocaust recently
removed by public schools include Art
Spiegelman’s “Maus,” which a Tennessee
district pulled from its middle school
curriculum last year, and Jodi Picoult’s
“The Storyteller,” which was removed
from another Florida district last month
following a parental challenge.

The removal at Vero Beach High
School was spurred by at least one
challenge from a parent in the district
affiliated with the conservative activist
group Moms For Liberty, according
to the Treasure Coast News, a local
publication. In the challenge, the parent
had reportedly written that the book was
“not a true adaptation of the Holocaust.”
The district backed up that sentiment,
Maddux said. “That’s not the actual diary
of Anne Frank,” she said. “It’s a fictional
novel that has some inappropriate
content in it.” Maddux added that the
book “was removed due to minimization
of the Holocaust,” and said, “Library
spaces in the district currently have
factual accounts of The Diary of Anne
Frank.” Maddux said that she herself had not
read the book and did not immediately
know what the “inappropriate content”
in question was.

In a statement about various
challenges to the graphic adaptation,
the Anne Frank Fonds, the Switzerland-
based foundation that controls the
copyright to her diary, said it was
“generally concerned that ignorance
about the Shoah, relativization or denial
of history are on the rise, especially in
the United States.”
The foundation also defended the
inclusion of Frank’s original writing by
saying, “We consider the book of a
12-year-old girl to be appropriate reading
for her peers.”
The graphic novel adaptation of the
diary was released in 2018 with the
full authorization of the Anne Frank
Fonds. Adapted by Israeli filmmaker Ari
Folman and illustrator David Polonsky
and intended for young readers, the
book compresses Frank’s actual diary
entries into a condensed version of her
true story. While it does contain some
invented dialogue and surrealist scenes,
reproductions of Frank’s actual diary in
the book hew to her exact words.

The graphic novel has attracted some
scrutiny for reproducing passages of
Frank’s diary that had been edited out of
its original publication in 1947. (The diary
was first published in English in 1952.)
— Andrew Lapin | JTA
Pantheon This blue square is 2.4% of this page.

Florida High
School Pulls
Graphic Novel
Adaptation of
Anne Frank’s Diary



local
Making It Count:
Area Jews Find Meaning in Omer Rituals
Sasha Rogelberg | Staff Writer
Courtesy of Gila Ruskin
I n 2000, Brandeis University health
policy researcher Brian Rosman
created homercalender.net. The
concept is simple: You visit the site
for each of the 49 days of the Omer
and find a bespoke image of Homer
Simpson corresponding to each day
and its accompanying blessings.

For the eighth day of the Omer on
April 13, one can “count the Homer”
with a picture of the Simpson patriarch
sipping Duff Beer from a beer helmet.

The practice of counting each day of
the Omer, the period between Passover
and Shavuot, obviously predates the
earliest days of the internet. The ancient
tradition is a period of self-reflection
and grounding, and with it comes a
myriad of ways to observe. After all, it’s
more than just the count that counts.

“I find it a deep mindfulness practice
that calls me present to count each
day,” said Rabbi Yael Levy, the rabbi
emerita of Mishkan Shalom and
creator of Jewish mindfulness teaching
program A Way In.

Levy counts the Omer in the tradi-
tional way: First saying a bracha, then
counting, then meditating on the day’s
aspect of human nature and emotion.

She’s gone on trips to the desert to
count the Omer and has friends who
mark the days by wearing a different
color. “It’s important to play with these
things,” she said. “It’s important to
enjoy them.”
Counting the Omer can have numer-
ous spiritual benefits, Levy said. The
ritual has origins in agriculture, with
“Omer” meaning “sheaf,” the measure
of grain taken to the Temple in
Jerusalem. The Omer was an opportu-
nity to pray daily for a good harvest and
rainy season.

Even though many Jews, like Levy,
are no longer agricultural people, the
ritual can reconnect people to the earth.

“May we be aligned with ourselves in
“Climbing Mt. Sinai - Counting the Omer,” created by Rabbi Gila Ruskin, is a mosaic Omer counter.

relationship to the earth and all people
that are caring well for the earth, so the
earth is able to yield this produce, and
rain comes in its time,” Levy said.

Susan Windle, a Philadelphia-based
writer, authored “Through the Gates:
A Practice for Counting the Omer,” a
collection of letters and poems she
wrote in her first few years of counting
the Omer.

A Jew by choice, Windle began
counting the Omer in 2008 at a spiri-
tual training before she converted and
found that the practice caught her
by surprise.

“The reason I do this is because I
literally fell in love with the practice and
with the people that I was practicing
with,” she said.

Windle wrote a poem that she shared
with friends, first one for every week of
the Omer, and, in the following years,
one for every day.

Each of the seven weeks of the Omer
corresponds to one of seven sefirot, or
divine emanations outlined in Kabbalah,
or Jewish mysticism. Each day of the
week corresponds with a middot, or
Jewish virtue. The days and weeks of
the Omer form a matrix and create a
specific theme or attribution of God, to
focus on for each day.

The Omer can also be a chance to build
community. Rabbi Gila Ruskin, formerly a
congregational rabbi in Baltimore, had a
congregant create an interactive Omer
counter out of plywood that sat on the
synagogue bimah.

Inspired to create her own, Ruskin
crafted a counter out of mosaic tiles,
with each sefirah and middah of the
Omer marked on a different color-coded
tile, forming a set of stairs leading to
Mount Sinai. She covered each tile
with drywall tape and, every day, the
children from the congregation would
tear off a piece of tape to reveal the tile
underneath. Though Ruskin led a Reform commu-
nity with little background in Jewish
mysticism, the ritual still had spiritual
meaning. “The concepts of liberation and revela-
tion are not just religious concepts,” she
said. “There’s something that we all
have in our lives.”
Counting the Omer can be accessible
to any Jew who wants to practice it,
Ruskin argued. For those not familiar
with or interested in its religious origins,
the Omer can simply be a lesson in how
to wait patiently and thoughtfully.

“Any of us could be in a situation
in our lives, where we’re waiting for
something, that you’re waiting for a
diagnosis; you’re waiting for a baby
to be born; you’re waiting for your
mortgage to come through. ... There’s
so many different situations, and it’s
good to have a ritual to do when you’re
in the process of waiting,” Ruskin said.

Though Jewish tradition dictates that
if one forgets to count the Omer one
night, they can pick it back up without
saying the blessing for the subsequent
days, Windle suggests beginners don’t
focus on the technicalities of the ritual.

“Don’t worry if you miss a day
because other people are counting and
holding it up for you,” Windle said. “Be
gentle, enjoy it, explore it. See what
happens.” ■
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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