Saying Goodbye to "Never Again"

This Monday, August 11, 2025, will be my last day as a curator at Kennesaw State University. The road is open ahead, although I intend to keep my eyes trained on the completion of my history PhD as the next major waystation. I am proud of the work that I did here at KSU for the past decade, even as I look forward to taking a break from thinking daily about the Holocaust and from the burden I have felt to inspire visitors to make moral decisions in their day-to-day lives.

The author standing in front of a mirror installation that was part of the Georgia Goes to War exhibition at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education

What does it mean to say goodbye to a role that has become so intertwined with my professional identity? 2025 has already been a year for letting go of expectations. With the high holidays around the corner, I approach the threshold to 5786 with new appreciation for the Jewish adage to "choose life" articulated by Moses in Deuteronomy 30:19. By this time in the Torah, Moses has already learned that he will not enter the promised land, but that does not mean he is free to stop leading the Israelites on their journey. 

I have become troubled by the finality of the idea of a promised land. As a Jewish American, I grew up believing I was already there and that, as a denizen of that land of equal rights and endless opportunity, my duty was to steward that promise. And yet, that sense of duty was coupled with a belief that, from my stance in the promised land, as long as I stayed vigilant and worked to stand up for what I believed in, the beacon of freedom would never go out. That's what it meant to live in the United States in the era of "never again." My education, from Holocaust commemoration to civil rights heroism, assured me that the worst of humanity was in the past. My role, as a citizen of the promised land, was to maintain this beautiful place and work to grow its symbolic borders through connections across time and space. The implication was always that this task was not only possible but assured as long as I remained committed and worked hard to extend the reach of education in broader and broader circles. 

Of course, there has been much discussion in Jewish communities and beyond about the meaning and utility of "never again," from the particular to the universal, and from a call to arms to a call for tolerance and peace. Just like the words of the bible, and, I would argue, of the U.S. Constitution, the power of such a phrase seems to lie in its ability to remain evocative even as it evokes opposite reactions or inspires opposite actions. For me, this phrase has always been pregnant with the potential for existential crisis. And existential crisis is exactly what the Torah warns us against.

Choosing life in 2025, and in 5786, means saying goodbye to "never again." The mountaintop I stand upon is so tall that it overlooks more than a promised land, or even a continent. It pierces the atmosphere and gives me a view of the stars, and I stand there giddy and lightheaded as my view turns inward, too, toward a mysterious network of neurons and emptiness. 

The promise that I seek is not concrete. Instead, it draws inspiration from the expansive power of symbols, including those that have dwelled for a time in specific places, like the United States. Returning again to earth, I stand on a scaffold, face to face with a pigeon whose advise to everyone's favorite Jewish mouse was to "Never Say Never Again," advice embodied in the Statue of Liberty. (And, as an aside, for your daily irony, the Statue of Liberty was designated as a National Monument in 1924, the year that the United States passed its most expansive anti-immigrant legislation to date.)

Screenshot from "An American Tail" with Henri le Pigeon and Fievel Mousekowitz

My "American Tail" need not stop with America, or with Jewishness, or even with humanity. As long as I can be unexpectedly brought to tears, as I was last night reading Barba Higuera's The Last Cuentista, by the same promises over and over again, I am ready to step across that threshold and spiral back again to home. Maybe I'll see you along the way.