A Second Meaning of Passover: Hope

As we approach Passover -- and we prepare to sing Mi Chamocha, the song that the Israelites sang after crossing the Sea of Reeds -- I am reminded that this holiday is often referred to as the season of liberation. And while Passover does indeed celebrate freedom, equally importantly, it affirms the Jewish belief that change is always possible. Just as a slave people can become a free people, so too can we change our lives and our world. This is a primary meaning of the seder night. Mah nishtanah halilah hazeh mikol haleilot, we say -- this night is different from all other nights. The way that it is isn't the way that it has to be. On Passover, we celebrate not only freedom, but the Jewish people's enduring belief that change is possible, our eternal belief in hope.

Living with the Holocaust

March 24, 2017 / 27 Adar, 5777 (Shabbat HaChodesh)

Rabbi Daniel Reiser | Westchester Reform Temple | Scarsdale, NY

Three weeks ago, Cantor Kleinman and I went with a group of our confirmation students to Washington, DC, to participate in the L’Taken Seminar. The L’Taken Seminar is a four-day conference, organized by the Religious Action Center, a branch of the Reform Movement that advocates for social justice in the halls of congress. Throughout the weekend, our 10th graders immersed themselves in some of the most pressing social justice issues of our time: climate change, gun violence prevention, voting rights, immigration reform, and a host of other issues. They also learned and practiced the skills of political advocacy: how a bill becomes a law, and how engaged citizens can influence that process.

The weekend culminated with our 10th graders, dressed in formal business attire, ascending Capitol Hill. With appointment times in hand, they knocked on the office doors of their elected officials. They were greeted by staffers from the offices of Representative Eliot Engel, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Senator Chuck Schumer. With poise and eloquence, having clearly done their homework, our students advocated for issues they believed in. They asked their representatives to vote for or against particular pieces of legislation. The staffers listened carefully, taking notes, and promising our students that their voices would be heard. These staffers were clearly impressed by the maturity and civic engagement of this group of young people -- as, of course, were Cantor Kleinman and I. In that moment, our students stood up not only for the issues that they believed in, but perhaps even more importantly, for the very ideal of the democratic process: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Of course, the weekend wasn’t all about advocacy. We spent time exploring the National Mall, dining in Georgetown, visiting the Smithsonian Museums, even celebrating havdalah on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. But among all these field trips, one in particular stood out to me: our visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

If you’ve never been to the Memorial, it is a powerful experience. You start in the museum’s basement, where you board an elevator up to the museum’s top floor. During that elevator ride, a video plays. It shows the faces of US soldiers who have just liberated a concentration camp -- the look of shock, horror, and disbelief on their faces. A voice-over features an interview with one of those soldiers, groping for words, totally unable to describe the utter horror that they’ve encountered. The video fades to black. The elevator doors open. And across from you, on the opposite wall, a grainy, black-and-white photograph shows exactly what those soldiers were so unable to believe or describe. Out of respect for the dead, I won’t describe it now. Above the photo, in giant block letters, are written the words: “This is the HOLOCAUST.”

When those elevator doors open, it is a terrible, gut wrenching, and important experience. From there, we moved through the museum in almost total silence. At the end, our group was noticeably emotionally drained.

As we left the museum, I began to wonder: What is it that organizers of the L’Taken Seminar have in mind when they include the Holocaust Memorial in the weekend’s itinerary? Clearly, our visit to the Memorial was put there by design. What, I wondered, is the intended effect of the visit? I suspect that for the weekend’s organizers, there is a complex network of assumptions that connects the Holocaust to our work advocating for social justice. What are those assumptions? Or, asked more broadly: What role does the Holocaust play in contemporary Jewish life?

This evening, I’d like to reflect upon these questions, and begin to approach some responses.

It would be nearly impossible to deny that the Holocaust represents a watershed moment in Jewish history, if not in world history. World War II -- and the Holocaust, in particular -- mark the turning point between the Modern Era and the Postmodern Era. The Modern Era, born of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, carried with it the conviction that reason and science would propel humanity forward. With near-messianic certainty, the Modern Era held out the possibility of human liberation, with progress and technology as its banner. But unfortunately, as Rabbi Dr. Eugene Borowitz,[1] of blessed memory, notes, “against all modern expectations, the Holocaust showed us evil, real and unrelieved.”[2] The technological progress of the Industrial Revolution led us only to more sophisticated killing machines. The high and noble culture of the Enlightenment led us only to the theory of a master race. The Holocaust smashed the Modern Era’s belief in the saving power of science and reason, ushering in the Postmodern Era -- an entirely new intellectual framework, both for the world at large and for the Jewish world in particular.

Among the challenges of the Postmodern Era is responding to the question: where was God at Auschwitz? Some Postmodern thinkers[3] conclude that God died at Auschwitz. Others[4] contend that at Auschwitz, God gave up God’s authority over human affairs. But the theological position that I think most accurately reflects the majority of contemporary Jews comes from Holocaust survivor Emil Fackenheim. Fackenheim notes that the God of the Hebrew Bible inhabits two primary roles: God, the benevolent redeemer, who saves the Israelites at the Sea of Reeds, and God, the wise lawgiver, who commands the Israelites at Mount Sinai. Fackenheim argues that while God the redeemer may have been largely absent from Auschwitz, God the lawgiver still resounds from Auschwitz today. To the traditional 613 Commandments found in the Torah, Fackenheim famously adds one more -- the 614th Commandment: “You shall not deliver Hitler a posthumous victory.”

By this, Fackenheim means that against Hitler’s scheme, we are all the more obligated to maintain our Jewish identities -- to choose to live as Jews in spite of Hitler's plan.

We could debate the correctness of Fackenheim’s conclusion -- but the important point here is that somehow, the Holocaust does indeed play a “commanding” role in contemporary Jewish life. We feel that commanding presence when we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel -- while the whole country stands still for two minutes at silent attention. We feel that commanding presence whenever we see a tattooed arm, or six-pointed yellow star bearing the word Jude. We feel that commanding presence whenever we lament that this generation will be the last to have known a survivor. We feel that commanding presence when those elevator doors open at the US Holocaust Memorial, and we are forced to bear witness to an atrocity that is nearly beyond words.

The commanding effect of the Holocaust is borne out not just in our life experiences, but even in statistical data. Consider at the much-discussed 2013 Pew Research Center Study entitled, “A Portrait of Jewish Americans.” When asked “What’s essential to being Jewish?” survey respondents most commonly -- nearly 75% of the time -- said “remembering the Holocaust.” That answer was given more often than “leading an ethical life,” “being intellectually curious,” “caring about Israel,” “belonging to a Jewish community,” and a host of others. And these results stand no matter how you divide the data set. Unlike other Jewish practices, the importance of which varied from demographic to demographic, remembering the Holocaust ranked as most essential for all age groups, all levels of education, all sexes, and all religious denominations.

So it seems that the organizers of the L’Taken Seminar are onto something when they include in the weekend’s itinerary a visit to the Holocaust Memorial: the Holocaust plays a commanding role in contemporary Jewish life. But an essential question still remains: What is it that the Holocaust commands of us?

The answer is clear, although the implications of that answer are murky. The Holocaust commands us: “Never again.”

We must now begin to sort through the murky implications of the commandment “never again.” “Never again what?” we might ask. Holocaust survivor and Israeli public intellectual Yehuda Elkana provides a helpful framework for this task. He wrote in Haaretz in 1988: “Two [Jewish] nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: [one] who assert[s], ‘this must never happen again,’ and [another] who assert[s], ‘this must never happen to us again.’”

His is a rather blunt instrument. Of course, these options are not mutually exclusive. We don’t truthfully belong to either one camp or the other. But Elkana’s framework does help to describe a core tension at play in contemporary Jewish life. Does the Holocaust primarily command us to fight against Jewish suffering, or against all human suffering? This question, simplistic though it may be, helpfully describes a core tension that gives rise to clashes within the Jewish community. We recognize, of course, that this tension exists not only between Jewish groups, but also, at various times, within any individual Jewish person. It will be helpful to explore this tension, in order to better understand it.

There are those times when our memory of the Holocaust commands us to fight against all forms of human suffering. This is how the organizers of the L’Taken Seminar seem to understand the commandment “never again.” Indeed, immediately after leaving the Holocaust Memorial, our itinerary took us to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial -- linking, if only by proximity, how Jewish people have suffered in Europe to how people of color have suffered in the United States.[5] The Seminar organizers seem to have been effective in transmitting their understanding of “never again”: many of our students, while lobbying their elected officials, talked about their experience at the Holocaust Memorial -- how the memory of Jewish suffering impels them to stand up for justice.

In the news, you’ll find that many Jews who advocate on behalf of resettling Syrian refugees in the United States employ the same understanding of “never again.” They cite the Voyage of the St. Louis, when Jewish refugees of the Holocaust were denied entry to the US, as a moral failure that should “never again” be repeated.

Of course, this universalistic understanding of “never again” is limited in scope. Philosopher Michael Wyschogrod notes[6] that while the Holocaust does command us never again to let similar events occur, we demean the Holocaust, he argues, when we use it as a rationale for fighting against any and every social ill. There’s no Holocaust of climate change, he would argue. Other Jewish thinkers take their critique of this position even a step further -- that social activism, noble though it may be, is, on its own, a hollow shell of a Jewish life. How does saying “never again” impel us, these thinkers ask, to celebrate Shabbat, or study Torah? Rabbi Harold Schulweis puts it thus: “Saying ‘no’ to Hitler is a far cry from living ‘yes’ to Judaism.”

On the other side of this tension, there are those times when our memory of the Holocaust rightly commands us to say: “never again will this happen to us.” As I am walking through the US Holocaust Memorial, it is this commandment that I primarily feel. I recognize myself in the photos of young Jewish families: a father, a mother, a young child. The hole in my gut is not for general human suffering, but rather, for my own family.

In the broader Jewish world, we see this particularistic understanding of “never again” perhaps nowhere more clearly than in the structure of Israel’s so called civil high holidays: Holocaust Remembrance Day, followed one week later by Israel’s Memorial Day, followed the next day by Israel’s Independence Day. The narrative arc of these holidays is clear: once, the Jewish people was vulnerable to the Holocaust; but now, because of the sacrifices of our soldiers, we enjoy self-governance -- and can safely say: “never again will this happen to us.”

Lest we think that this understanding of “never again” occurs only in Israel, consider the public spat between the Anti-Defamation League and the World Jewish Congress -- both of which are headquartered in New York City -- over whether the White House’s recent statement on Holocaust Memorial Day was explicit enough in mentioning Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust. In that instance, the ADL stood up to say that the Holocaust does and should have unique significance to the Jewish people.

But this position, too, has its limitations. In Israel, it can lead to what one of my professors calls “Iron Dome Syndrome” -- referring of course, to the Iron Dome missile defense system that protects Israeli civilians and soldiers from rocket attacks. “Iron Dome Syndrome,” my professor argues, is a duck-and-cover mentality learned over centuries of Jewish oppression, the negative effects of which include believing that the Jews can trust no one but ourselves. In the United States and elsewhere, Iron Dome Syndrome might be more easily recognized as the common dinner table question that often follows any discussion of public affairs: “Sure -- but is it good for the Jews?” Such a position -- whether in its Israeli or its Diaspora forms -- can make it difficult for Jews to find allies and build coalitions with like-minded partners.[7]

Unfortunately, the tension over what exactly the Holocaust commands of us is not easily resolved. But exploring this tension can hopefully help us to understand the role that the Holocaust plays in our contemporary Jewish landscape -- and perhaps, can help us to heal the divides within our communities and within our own Jewish selves. After all, understanding the Holocaust’s commanding role in Jewish life can help us to move from the shallowness of political arguments to understanding the depth of shared feeling and trauma that underlie our divisions. We are all of us living in a post-Holocaust age. And like those speechless American soldiers who liberated the concentration camps, we are all of us struggling to understand the gravity of what this post-Holocaust age requires of us.

Perhaps we ought to revisit our question -- and in so doing, pay honor to the dead: What is it that the Holocaust commands of us? Maybe, rather than “never again,” the Holocaust instead impels us to “never forget”[8] -- never to forget the agony of those who were murdered; never to forget the pain of those who survived; never to forget the communities that were destroyed; never to forget the heroes who sacrificed their own lives so that others might live; never to forget the words of Eli Wiesel, of blessed memory, which command us with unambiguous clarity:

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night. … Never shall I forget the faces of the little children. … Never shall I forget those flames. … Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.[9]

---

[1] I note that this sermon relies heavily on modern Jewish thinkers, but does so exclusively on male thinkers. A different analysis that includes female voices might yield different conclusions.

[2] Renewing the Covenant, p. 42.

[3] Richard Rubenstein, for example.

[4] Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, for example.

[5] Pairing the Holocaust Memorial with the MLK memorial is problematic for its own reasons. If these two disparate experiences of suffering are to be linked to one another, then we ought to do so on equal terms. The Holocaust Memorial asks our students to bear witness to physical suffering inflicted on Jewish bodies in ways that the MLK memorial does not. If we are serious about linking these two experiences of suffering, we ought to ask our students to similarly bear witness to the physical suffering that this country has inflicted on black bodies.

[6] As articulated in Borowitz’s Renewing the Covenant, p. 79.

[7] For a helpful analysis and interesting (if overly complex) proposal regarding this problem, see this article by Yehuda Kurtzer: http://jewishjournal.com/opinion/214276/linda-sarsour-american-jewish-politics/

[8] Holocaust survivor and theologian Eli Wiesel argues that the “additional covenant” that is born of Auschwitz is not between God and Israel, but rather, “between Israel and its memories of pain and death.” He goes on to articulate three obligations of this “additional covenant”: “solidarity” of the Jewish people to one another, past and present; “witness” -- that is, keeping alive the memory of the dead; and “the sanctification of life,” -- that is, affirming that life is meaningful and has quality and purpose. (As articulated in Michael Berebaum’s Elie Wiesel: God, the Holocaust, and the Children of Israel, p. 127ff.) I understand Wiesel to mean that the Holocaust commands nothing political from us, but rather, only to remember and affirm the lives of the dead. Therein lies the distinction between “never again” and “never forget.” I seek to capture this understanding of Wiesel with the quote by him that follows.

[9] In addition to the sources cited in this sermon, the following article, by Shaul Magid about Jacob Neusner, was influential: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/188365/stop-obsessing-over-holocaust

Pi: The Endless Mystery

This past Tuesday, math nerds around the world celebrated Pi Day: March 14th -- or, as it’s written out numerically, 3 [dot] 14, the first three digits of the number Pi. Pi, of course, is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, a decimal that has no end. In honor of this mathematical marvel, geeks around the world celebrated on Tuesday by baking actual pies (the dessert, not the number), eating other round foods, or, in the case of our own Cantor Kleinman, showing her love for the number by reciting its first 100 digits from memory. (No joke.)

We marvel at the number Pi because, somehow, it reminds us of ourselves. Just when you think you’ve understood what Pi is, it reveals yet another digit of itself. Like us -- and perhaps even like God -- Pi is an endless mystery, whose essence we can begin to know, but whose depth is infinitely too great to fathom.

Our prayer Ma’ariv Aravim praises God as a goleil, a creator of circles. On this week of Pi Day, we celebrate the circle, and wonder at the endless mystery they represent.

We say: Baruch Atah Adonai Ha-Ma’ariv Aravim.

A Purim MadLib

The following MadLib was populated with funny answers by parents and students at WRT's Purim Palooza.

A long time ago, in the year 37, in the Kingdom of Iceland, in the capital city of Oklahoma City, there ruled a yellow king named Donald Trump. King Donald Trump ruled alongside his beloved Queen Michael Jackson. Now King Donald Trump loved nothing more than to throw great parties. And so King Donald Trump threw a party and invited Queen Michael Jackson to attend. But Queen Michael Jackson refused to come to the party, because she was going to Disney World. Upon hearing of her refusal, King Donald Trump grew furious, and so he punished her by making her go to Religious School.

Now King Donald Trump was without a queen. And so he held an armpit farting contest in order to look for a new queen.

Many young ladies in the land came to participate in the armpit farting contest. But among them all, a young Jewish woman, the brave and stinky Esther, stood out. And so, King Donald Trump asked the brave and stinky Esther to be his new queen.

Esther had a cousin, whose name was Mordechai. And Mordechai advised Esther to keep her Jewish identity a secret.

Now King Donald Trump had a dissoluble adviser named Haman.  And dissoluble Haman required that all of the people in the kingdom skip whenever they saw him. But Mordechai refused to do so, because he was a Jew -- and everybody knows that Jews don’t skip to other human beings, they only skip to God. This made Haman furious!

So Haman devised an evil plot as punishment for the Jews. He declared that all Jews must clean their room.

When stinky Esther learned of Haman’s evil plan to make all the Jews clean their room, she decided, after much deliberation, that now was the time for her to reveal to King Donald Trump that she, too, was a Jew. King Donald Trump promised to save the Jews, and instead of forcing the Jews to clean their room, he declared that the exact opposite should happen: Haman and his followers had to dirty up their house.

And that, my friends, is the story of Purim -- the story of how the stinky Queen Esther saved the Jews of Oklahoma City in the Kingdom of Iceland from having to clean their rooms.