I had mistaken the enormous public interest in past Jewish suffering for a sign of respect for living Jews. I was very wrong. This fact should have been obvious to me from the beginning of my writing career, when my most acclaimed early published piece, the one nominated for a major award, wasn't the one about Jewish historical sites in Spain but rather the one about death camps. I made a point of resisting this reality, asking people at my public talks if they could name three death camps, and then asking the same people if they could name three Yiddish authors-the language spoken by over 80 percent of death-camp victims. What, I asked, was the point of caring so much about how people died, if one cared so little about how they lived? (Introduction)

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I had mistaken the enormous public interest in past Jewish suffering for a sign of respect for living Jews. I was very wrong. This fact should have been obvious to me from the beginning of my writing career, when my most acclaimed early published piece, the one nominated for a major award, wasn't the one about Jewish historical sites in Spain but rather the one about death camps. I made a point of resisting this reality, asking people at my public talks if they could name three death camps, and then asking the same people if they could name three Yiddish authors-the language spoken by over 80 percent of death-camp victims. What, I asked, was the point of caring so much about how people died, if one cared so little about how they lived? (Introduction)" in the context of "" to mean that wisdom is timeless.