I have recently forced myself to read some of the reactions to the catastrophe written by journalists, government leaders, rabbis, and \u201cordinary\u201d people of diverse persuasions. I\u2019ve been hoping to find common threads in these reactions, phrases that can at least stimulate constructive thought.<\/p>\n
I hope to put several of these common threads into my writing but will focus in this column on just one such phrase that is recurrent, frightening, and full of implications for our future. That one phrase, which appears repeatedly in almost exactly similar words, reads as follows:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe worst such event since the Holocaust!\u201d<\/p>\n
As those of you who are familiar with my lectures, sermons, and writings are aware, I am obsessed with the Holocaust. I have a personal collection of books on the Holocaust which numbers several hundred volumes, and I have read most of them cover to cover. I have interviewed, formally and informally, numerous survivors of the Holocaust and have led many trips to Eastern Europe, visiting death camps and desecrated cemeteries. I have many questions, and few answers, to what the saintly Slonimer Rebbe, of blessed memory, author of Nesivot Shalom,<\/i> termed the greatest tragedy in world history, bar none.<\/p>\n
One of those many questions is, \u201cWhen did the Holocaust begin?\u201d<\/p>\n
Was it with the rise of Hitler to power? Was it the Nazis\u2019 decision to systematically eradicate every Jew from the face of the earth? Or was it something much earlier?<\/p>\n
Was it World War I, which decimated many Jewish communities, and left the infrastructure of hundred of shtetlach<\/i> in ruins? Or can it be traced to some of the dark and primitive antecedents of the German culture? Could it have begun with the pogroms in Czarist Russia, or perhaps in the massacres of 1648-1649? Or as far back as the Crusades? Or further still?<\/p>\n
Not an easy question to answer. But a more difficult question to answer is this: \u201cWhen did the Holocaust end?\u201d With the defeat of the Nazis and the end of World War II? But what about the pogrom in the Polish town of Kielce in 1947, two full years after the war, which drove out of Poland a community of Jewish survivors who had hoped to recover and rebuild their pre-war community? I possess a scrap from a Sefer Torah<\/i> that was recovered from the assault on the synagogue there, which I retain as a graphic reminder of the persistence of the Holocaust. The text of that fragment of parchment begins with the words \u201cThou shalt not murder,\u201d from the version of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy<\/em>.<\/p>\nOctober 7th reformulates my question from \u201cWhen did the Holocaust end?\u201d to \u201cWhen will the Holocaust end?\u201d Or even to a much more troubling question, \u201cWill the Holocaust ever end?\u201d<<\/p>\n
There is another question which is less speculative than the two I just mentioned. It can at least lead to action on our part. That is the question, \u201cWhat can we do, in practical, do-able terms, in reaction to \u2018holocausts\u2019 of the distant and recent past?\u201d For a fascinating and challenging answer, I turn to a passage in the Midrash Tanchuma<\/i> on a verse in this week\u2019s Torah portion, Vayigash <\/i>(Genesis<\/em> 44:18-47:27).<\/p>\nThe passage describes the first conversation that Yosef had with his younger brother Binyamin. It reads:<\/p>\n
Binyamin responds, \u2018Yes!\u2019<\/p>\n
Binyamin: \u2018Yes, ten!\u2019<\/p>\n
Yosef: \u2018What are their names?\u2019<\/p>\n
Binyamin: \u2018Bela, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Achi, Rosh, Mupim, Chupim, and Ord.\u2019<\/p>\n
Yosef: \u2018Who ever heard such strange names?!\u2019<\/p>\n
Binyamin: \u2018I named all of them for my older brother: Bela, for he was swallowed (bala) <\/i>by aliens; Becher, for he was the first born (bechor<\/i>) to our mother; Ashbel, for he was held captive (nishbeh<\/i>); Gera, for he was a stranger (ger<\/i>) in a foreign land; Naaman, because he was so pleasant (naim<\/i>); Achi, for he was my brother (ach<\/i>), son of my mother; Rosh, because he was my superior (rosh<\/i>); Mupim, for he was so handsome (yafeh<\/i>); Chupim, for he did not see my wedding canopy (chupah<\/i>), nor did I see his; and Ord, for he descended (yarad<\/i>) into exile, and had a rosy (vered<\/i>) complexion, and from the time he disappeared, our father came down (yarad<\/i>) from his bed and slept on the floor, and, moreover, when we get together as a family, all my father\u2019s children sit with their brothers while I sit alone with my eyes shedding tears.\u201d<\/p>\n
Note Binyamin\u2019s poignant reaction to his own personal \u201cholocaust.\u201d His world was destroyed by Yosef\u2019s unknown fate. He chooses to give his children names that preserve his recollection of his brother and refresh his anguish constantly. Every interaction with his ten sons provokes details of his long-gone brother. Like his father, Yaakov, he refuses to be consoled. He is desperately lonely and weeps copiously in solitude.<\/p>\n
And yet, he looks ahead to the future with hope. His ten children represent an assured future, the prospect of a better time. His perspective is on the future, as is the perspective of every parent, and most definitely of every parent of ten children!<\/p>\n
Binyamin is a model of appropriate grief. He understands that, however paradoxical, grief must contain two components: sincere and lasting sadness, coupled with personal growth associated with acceptance of reality and the courage to march forward to a better future.<\/p>\n
I close with an interaction I was once privileged to have with a true Chassidic sage, now long deceased. I asked him why certain sectors of the Orthodox community do not recognize a Yom HaShoah<\/i>, a Memorial Day for the Holocaust. He responded that such fixed public memorials stimulate remembrance, which is important and which we Chassidim <\/i>do daily, especially by naming our children after those lost in the Holocaust. Every newborn helps us remember.<\/p>\n
But, he wisely added, our goal must be to retain, recover, and restore as much as possible of what was lost. That can only be done in a growth-oriented atmosphere with optimism and hope, confidence and simcha<\/i>. Such an atmosphere is absent on funereal memorial days.<\/p>\n
To return to the moment: we must grieve for the victims of Simchat Torah 5784 and for all the painful losses we have experienced in the wake of that terrible day. But we must change courageously, constructively, confidently, and b\u2019simchah<\/i>. We must motivate ourselves to grow, as individuals, as a nation, and with the conviction that Grief has two components: Remembrance and Growth.<\/p>\n
Binyamin was the youngest of the ten tribes. But I\u2019ve come to believe that the Beit HaMikdash<\/i>, the Holy Temple, was situated in Binyamin\u2019s territory so that just as the Temple is our spiritual center, so do we have a lot to learn from this \u201cbaby brother\u201d and the names of his ten children!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Weinreb_Tzvi.jpg\")