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An Offering on the Fires of Remembrance
Apr. 7th, 2013 07:19 pmI’ve started teaching Torah school, which for the preschool age kids I’ve got means glitter, glue, scavenger hunts, and the occasional Torah story, edited so as not to terrify the poor kids out of their wits. I love it. I love children, I love teaching, and I thrive on a certain level of chaos, which the kids give me in overabundance.
And I love Judaism. I love my religion, I love my culture, I love my people’s history, and I love sharing them with people who could come to love them too. Today, Yom HaShoah, is a remembrance of a part of that history that I do not love, and do not wish the children I teach would ever have to learn about. But they do have to learn about it, and they will. Not yet, but someday. It is dark, it is horrible, and it is a hard, cold reminder that there are people who would kill these children for our Jewishness, for this thing I love so much, and that I am passing this Jewishness down to these children, who if the tides turn again, could die because of it. Because Yom HaShoah is the day we remember the Holocaust.
I think every Jewish child remembers the first time they learned about the Holocaust. I certainly do. I was older than most because of my childhood neurological difficulties, ten-years-old, and reading everything I could get my hands on. One of those books was the Diary of Anne Frank, which I had borrowed from the Rabbi of the congregation we belonged to in California. I asked her why it just ended the way it did. And she explained. I remember feeling as if I couldn’t breathe, and I remember just asking why? What made this group of people so different that that one wanted us dead. I couldn’t grasp it. I still can’t quite.
We of the Jewish people bear a terrible burden from the Holocaust, even those of us who came no closer to it than hearing the stories of others. We as a people survived to love in a world where millions upon millions of us have died. The weight of our duty to them must be borne. And yet, we don’t own the memory of the Holocaust alone. We were not the only ones to die, or to be burdened so with the duty to remember. The Nazis killed millions of people who were not Jewish, Romani, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses... I am disabled and bisexual as well as Jewish. My name would have been three times signed on my death warrant for each. I am also German. My father’s gentile family is German and Austrian. My beloved stepgrandfather’s father was a Nazi.
There are parts of the Holocaust history that I love, that I am glad for, and want to share, just as I want to share all the history of my people. There are stories of incredible self-sacrifice, of people who lost their freedom or died to save others, of people who clung to life and to hope in spite of the misery around them, who fought, people who lived because the hate the Nazis tried to spread didn’t penetrate the hearts of their friends and neighbors. There are stories of kindness, or bravery, and of love, and there are stories of survival as well as death.
We didn’t have Torah study for the preschoolers this week. They’re too young still for the lessons of this day. Next week, we’re learning about Moses. I’m taking them hiking around the synagogue garden and pretend we’ve been in the desert for forty years. I have a baby doll that is going to be Moses in the bullrushes. Passover was not that long ago, and Purim was not that long before that. Yom HaShoah comes in the spring, as the weather warms up, the leaves fill the trees, and the flowers bloom. And in truth, the story of Yom HaShoah is not all that different from the story of Purim or Passover. We often joke that every Jewish holiday goes the same way: “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” What makes Yom HaShoah different is not what happened. People have been trying to kill us off for as long as we have walked the earth, but how very close it is to now. Someday, Yom HaShoah may join Purim and Passover, and Hanukah, and we may celebrate that we are still here, and the Nazis did not manage to kill us all.
But not yet. For now, the wound in the Jewish people is too raw for us to claim victory in living. There are still people who carry the memory of the camps inside their minds and on their bodies, who survived hiding, and slavery, and starvation and disease, who saw the smoke rising from the crematoriums, and the ashes of their fellow human beings scattered like dust. There are still people who grew up with parents or grandparents with haunted eyes and numbers on their arms. Someday, the time will come that on this day, we celebrate life, but for now, it must serve to honor the dead.
And I love Judaism. I love my religion, I love my culture, I love my people’s history, and I love sharing them with people who could come to love them too. Today, Yom HaShoah, is a remembrance of a part of that history that I do not love, and do not wish the children I teach would ever have to learn about. But they do have to learn about it, and they will. Not yet, but someday. It is dark, it is horrible, and it is a hard, cold reminder that there are people who would kill these children for our Jewishness, for this thing I love so much, and that I am passing this Jewishness down to these children, who if the tides turn again, could die because of it. Because Yom HaShoah is the day we remember the Holocaust.
I think every Jewish child remembers the first time they learned about the Holocaust. I certainly do. I was older than most because of my childhood neurological difficulties, ten-years-old, and reading everything I could get my hands on. One of those books was the Diary of Anne Frank, which I had borrowed from the Rabbi of the congregation we belonged to in California. I asked her why it just ended the way it did. And she explained. I remember feeling as if I couldn’t breathe, and I remember just asking why? What made this group of people so different that that one wanted us dead. I couldn’t grasp it. I still can’t quite.
We of the Jewish people bear a terrible burden from the Holocaust, even those of us who came no closer to it than hearing the stories of others. We as a people survived to love in a world where millions upon millions of us have died. The weight of our duty to them must be borne. And yet, we don’t own the memory of the Holocaust alone. We were not the only ones to die, or to be burdened so with the duty to remember. The Nazis killed millions of people who were not Jewish, Romani, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses... I am disabled and bisexual as well as Jewish. My name would have been three times signed on my death warrant for each. I am also German. My father’s gentile family is German and Austrian. My beloved stepgrandfather’s father was a Nazi.
There are parts of the Holocaust history that I love, that I am glad for, and want to share, just as I want to share all the history of my people. There are stories of incredible self-sacrifice, of people who lost their freedom or died to save others, of people who clung to life and to hope in spite of the misery around them, who fought, people who lived because the hate the Nazis tried to spread didn’t penetrate the hearts of their friends and neighbors. There are stories of kindness, or bravery, and of love, and there are stories of survival as well as death.
We didn’t have Torah study for the preschoolers this week. They’re too young still for the lessons of this day. Next week, we’re learning about Moses. I’m taking them hiking around the synagogue garden and pretend we’ve been in the desert for forty years. I have a baby doll that is going to be Moses in the bullrushes. Passover was not that long ago, and Purim was not that long before that. Yom HaShoah comes in the spring, as the weather warms up, the leaves fill the trees, and the flowers bloom. And in truth, the story of Yom HaShoah is not all that different from the story of Purim or Passover. We often joke that every Jewish holiday goes the same way: “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” What makes Yom HaShoah different is not what happened. People have been trying to kill us off for as long as we have walked the earth, but how very close it is to now. Someday, Yom HaShoah may join Purim and Passover, and Hanukah, and we may celebrate that we are still here, and the Nazis did not manage to kill us all.
But not yet. For now, the wound in the Jewish people is too raw for us to claim victory in living. There are still people who carry the memory of the camps inside their minds and on their bodies, who survived hiding, and slavery, and starvation and disease, who saw the smoke rising from the crematoriums, and the ashes of their fellow human beings scattered like dust. There are still people who grew up with parents or grandparents with haunted eyes and numbers on their arms. Someday, the time will come that on this day, we celebrate life, but for now, it must serve to honor the dead.
