Sign In Forgot Password

TEMPLE SHIR TIKVA

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) - A Day of Hope

05/09/2019 07:54:33 PM

May9

The Wayland Town Crier

I think it’s fair to say that we are living in challenging times. Up until today, this week had not been my favorite one to be a Rabbi. It began in the shadow of the hateful attack on Congregation Chabad in Poway, CA and the murder of Lori Gilbert Kaye, zichrona livracha (may her memory be for a blessing). We received a few messages of support, but the outpouring and reaction was markedly different to what happened after the attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. A colleague and I wondered whether the response was more muted because as the second synagogue shooting it was less of a surprise, or perhaps we are growing accustomed to attacks on Houses of Worship, following on the heels of the Mosque in Christchurch and the Churches in Sri Lanka. 

Unsurprisingly, this second attack has meant that once again the subject of security in the synagogue has dominated our conversations. At a meeting of Rabbis at the local Chabad we lamented the challenges that we are facing today and the needs for locked doors and additional security measures. I recognize the necessity of these conversations, but they weren’t anywhere on the list of reasons why I became a Rabbi. And it’s hard to get away from the underlying cause of these conversations as we witness the growth of extremism, fundamentalism, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism both here and across the globe.

It feels somewhat appropriate that Yom HaShoah, our Jewish day for remembering the Holocaust, falls during this week. We can’t help but recognize elements of hate and prejudice here in America today that feel eerily familiar to what we witnessed in Europe during the last century.

To mark this year’s Yom HaShoah, I was honored to have been asked to deliver the invocation and benediction at the US Army Natick Soldier Systems Center’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, alongside my synagogue member, Sylvia Ruth Gutmann, a Holocaust survivor, who would share her story. I did not know what to expect from this event and I arrived carrying the weight of this week’s challenges on my shoulders. I left feeling renewed and invigorated with hope in my heart.

I had the privilege of sitting on the stage for the ceremony, and so while Sylvia was speaking, sharing her harrowing story filled with episodes of extreme cruelty and unbelievable kindness, I could watch the reaction of the audience. I looked out at an auditorium filled with about 250 people. Approximately half were soldiers in uniform, there were a significant number of identifiable (they wore a distinguishing hat) Jewish army veterans, and there were lots of people in civilian clothes (some from the base and some from outside). All of them were gripped and visibly moved by Sylvia’s story. You could feel the emotion in the room as they listened to her words.  

In the opening remarks, SSG Jamar James Daniels quoted from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, that he had forced himself to visit the Ohrdruf and Buchenwald concentration camps “in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.” All those years later, we were continuing Eisenhower’s pledge and ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust was a part of these soldiers’ service and their lives. Today, maybe more than ever before, the importance of that commitment and the necessity to share the story of that darkest time felt overwhelming. In the midst of all of the hate, evil, and violence in this world, these soldiers were bearing witness to Sylvia’s story and receiving her charge to fight prejudice and bring kindness into the world.

The significance of the event, the telling of Sylvia’s story in that specific context, and the realization that this was an official event of the US Military made for an incredibly powerful experience. And as we say at the Passover Seder, if that had been the end, dayenu – it would have been enough. But it wasn’t.

At the conclusion of the event, as Sylvia stepped down from the stage, a line of soldiers quickly developed. These young men and women, most of them in their early 20’s, were queueing up for an opportunity to meet her personally. I couldn’t hear what each soldier said to Sylvia, but I watched, as she embraced each and every one of them and the power of that sight was simply overwhelming. For me, in that moment Sylvia represented a generation that had witnessed the worst of human evil and behavior. And with each embrace she was ensuring that these young men and women, who represent the future, would be her emissaries carrying her story with them. She was enlisting her own army of soldiers, charged to fight prejudice, hate, and evil wherever they find it and committed to pursue her call to fill the world with kindness.

It is easy to despair at the state of our world today and the worrying direction in which we appear to be heading. But this event filled me with hope. It will take many different responses to beat back the forces of hate. But in that room, filled with a mixed multitude of generations, races, and religions, on Yom HaShoah of all days and with Sylvia’s story to inspire us, it felt like we were witness to an important and vital response.

I am emerging from Yom HaShoah filled with hope, and I am grateful to Sylvia, to the authorities that created this event, and to the young men and women of the US Army who gave me that gift.

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784