Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation celebrated its 30th anniversary with a star-studded gala in New York last week.
In addition to the legendary director, who founded the Shoah Foundation after winning the Oscar in 1994 Schindler's ListMeryl Streep, Whoopi Goldberg, Bruce Springsteen, Drew Barrymore, Itzhak Perlman, Debra Messing, Wendell Pierce and Alex Edelman were among the nearly 700 guests at the Ambassadors for Humanity Gala in Midtown Manhattan.
Among the luminaries in attendance, Edelman, who served as emcee for the evening, joked, “If your rabbi isn't in this room, he's worthless.”
Taking place just the day after Yom Kippur, the event, Edelman joked, was “the most expensive break fast in New York City.”
“What a way to unwind after a day of fasting and repenting, huh, the Holocaust?! With the opening act, the Armenian Genocide,” he continued jokingly.
Turning serious, Edelman said he was there both as the grandson of survivors, calling the Shoah Foundation's work “profoundly important to me,” and because Spielberg asked him to.
And he earned Spielberg's gratitude for “bringing [his] parent company” as he shared a touching story about how he met the legendary director's mother, Leah Adler, at her kosher restaurant The Milky Way, when he was a teenager working for the Dodgers in Los Angeles
Edelman regularly visited the restaurant, which he called “one of the few decent kosher restaurants in the world,” and expressed his appreciation for the way Adler “just fed me.”
“I came in one time, sat down, and she took one look at me, went in the back and brought out this, like, chowder,” he said. “And she put it in front of me and I said, 'Miss Adler, I didn't order soup.' And she said, 'You need soup today.'”
After two months, Adler asked Edelman if he wanted to see “the corner of his son's restaurant,” taking him to a part of the building that was “decorated with pictures of Steven Spielberg.”
“I was like, 'Your son is obsessed with Steven Spielberg,'” he recalled, laughing. “And she says, 'My son is Steven Spielberg.'” With Edelman still skeptical, Adler offered proof.
“He reaches under the counter and pulls out the Oscar Schindler's Listand puts it on the counter like it's a full house of cards,” Edelman said.
The comedian reunited with Adler around 2015 or 2016 when he stopped at the restaurant with his friends.
He said, “I went up to her and said, 'Miss Adler, you probably don't remember me, but I used to come over a lot as a teenager.” You always fed me. You never made me pay and I really appreciated it.' And she leaned over and said [something]to his nurse, to his aide, and the nurse said, “He just said, 'Dodgers.'”
Edelman continued, “Of course, this foundation has lasted for three decades because the driving force behind it comes from this extraordinary legacy. … He is a family man, and we are so fortunate that that family is not just his immediate family or the family in this room, and not just the Jewish people, but humanity in general.”
The foundation, based at the University of Southern California since 2006, aims to collect, preserve and share testimonies with Holocaust survivors and witnesses. It has also expanded its mission to document other genocidal crimes such as the Armenian Genocide and contemporary anti-Semitism, working to combat the latter.
The moving evening featured reflections on all those heinous incidents, with Holocaust survivors and their descendants urging people to never forget and never allow such a tragedy to happen again. Numerous speakers expressed concern about the rise of anti-Semitism in recent years, particularly in the context of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Spielberg echoed his remarks from when he received the USC medallion last spring, saying, “In recent years, I fear once again, we must fight for the very right to be Jewish.”
“To do this, survivors and the survivor community have taught us that the greatest antidote to hate is in the power of empathy,” he added.
Messages from survivors, Spielberg said, are even more crucial today, “as we mark the one-year anniversary of a horrific October 7 massacre and the brutal torture and murder of innocent hostages; more crucial to stopping political violence caused by lies, conspiracy theories and ignorance; and more crucial to stopping the growing threat of anti-Semitism.”
Spielberg called for the hostages to be brought home and talked about the Palestinians who died during the war.
“All human life is precious, including those 42,000 Palestinian men, women and children who have been victims of a war not of their choosing,” he said.
The foundation, which Spielberg called “the most positive journey of my entire professional life,” will allow future generations, he said, to “recognize the boos of white nationalism, anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and anti-democratic movements ”.
Spielberg presented the foundation's first Leadership Award to longtime board of trustees and executive committee member Mickey Shapiro, with the honor now named after Shapiro, recognizing his commitment to preserving Holocaust memory and combating anti-Semitism through research and education.
Spielberg wasn't the only one to connect the foundation's work to the present day, with Streep opening the evening by talking about the threat of fake news and the ability, through artificial intelligence and other forms of technology, to “manufacture” Images.
“We may be the last generation of people who could, with confidence, rely on photographic images to distinguish between fact and fiction. The last generation that could point to filmed evidence as proof of anything,” he said. “When we think of those iconic images, the exhausting photos of the liberation of the camps in 1945 or that photo of a little girl, a victim of napalm, running along the road in Vietnam or the black and white photos of lynchings in the South or a girl kneeling on the body of a fellow student at Kent State. These powerful images can, in the very, very, very near future, be produced undetectably. And if that's the case, pretty soon people will think it always is. That assumption that after a certain date all the evidence is in question, all the news is false, here… the tremor I feel under my feet. We all live on fault lines and can only hope and pray that the built domestic civilization is strong enough to support us.”
The words of survivors, Streep said, “are more crucial than ever to bring us face to face with what hate can do and where it can take us, to remind us of the consequences if we do nothing, and to keep alive the memory of what it actually happened, not only to recount the unspeakable acts of the past, but to inspire us with the vivid accounts of courage they reveal to us. And that courage is something we will all need in the near future.”
Angela Sarafyan, Messing, Pierce and Matthew Modine also took the stage and spoke about the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, racism during the Second World War and modern anti-Semitism, introducing the testimonies of survivors.
“The Holocaust shows the modern world what happens when hatred goes unchecked,” Messing said. “How apathy can allow tyrants to do pure evil.”
Modine added: “Never forget is undoubtedly a powerful motto and yet also an easy one to ignore. The last year has been one of the most difficult for the Jewish people since the Holocaust and in a climate where hatred of all kinds seems to be reinforced by our politics and enhanced by the advent of social media, the darkness that created the Holocaust has resurfaced. …close to the surface.”
Subsequently, Perlman performed the theme from Schindler's Listand Springsteen, a surprise guest, performed “The Ghost of Tom Joad” and “Dancing in the Dark.”
The Ambassadors for Humanity Award, whose presentation closed the evening, went to Holocaust survivors, recognizing their strength, resilience and contribution to the preservation of history, with survivor Irene Weiss accepting the honor on behalf of the more than 50 survivors who attended the event. and talking about his experience at 13 years old.
The event also featured speeches from USC President Carol Folt, Shoah Foundation Executive Director Robert Williams and Board of Advisors Chair Joel Citron. And the gala marked the launch of the foundation's giving campaign, which aims to raise $300 million, of which $105 million in grants and pledges have been secured, to provide funding and expand the foundation's research and educational programs ; protect, enhance and make your digital archive freely accessible; and strengthen the foundation's presence in Washington, DC