As President Barack Obama visits Southeast Asia this week–in which he made an historic visit to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, meeting with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi–take a look back at Moment‘s 2010 article, “Letter from Myanmar,” which describes the Jewish community there:
“For most of their history in the country, Burma has been, as Ruth Cernea once wrote, “a tolerant home for the Jews.” To this day, Burmese Jews and their descendants zealously protect Burma’s reputation, stressing that any wrongs done to the country’s Jews were either perpetrated by the Japanese or stemmed from the Jews’ perceived Britishness. For the most part, anti-Semitism has been absent here. Even the looters who targeted the synagogue and other Jewish sites during World War II and then again in the aftermath of Israel’s Suez War of 1956 seem to have been forgiven. “Life in Burma as Jews was never threatened,” says Sally Joseph. “Everyone co-existed peacefully.” And Mayer claims in his speech at the Park Royal that “the term anti-Semitism is unknown here.””
To read the entire article, click here.
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