Am I The Worst Jew Ever?
Yesterday was Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day).
I forgot.
Really.
Now, before you all verbally lambaste me, hear me out! You see, when I was a kid, Yom HaShoah wasn't a big deal.
I'm making it worse, aren't I?
It's not that the Holocaust wasnt a big deal. Just the day on the calendar. Which seems odd, when you consider that I went to Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founded by people originating in Frankfurt Am Main. Or maybe it doesn't.
Growing up we didn't need a special day to remember the Shoah. It's hard to forget it when the people putting Tfillin away on either side of you have numbers tattooed on their arms. It's hard to forget it when everyone you know lost someone. It's hard to forget when your grandfathers tell you stories about fighting in the US Armed Forces.
When I was a small child there was a cliche that went like this:
Child: Why is there a Mother's Day and a Father's Day but no Children's Day?
Parent or Grandparent: Because EVERY day is Children's Day.
Now, this is no longer wholly accurate (Children's Day is November 20th), it's the same mindset I apply to Yom HaShoah.
EVERY day is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
(What is sad is that my daughter's generation may have a real need for a Yom HaShoah, just as we seem to now need a Children's Day.
But more on that in another post)
I forgot.
Really.
Now, before you all verbally lambaste me, hear me out! You see, when I was a kid, Yom HaShoah wasn't a big deal.
I'm making it worse, aren't I?
It's not that the Holocaust wasnt a big deal. Just the day on the calendar. Which seems odd, when you consider that I went to Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, founded by people originating in Frankfurt Am Main. Or maybe it doesn't.
Growing up we didn't need a special day to remember the Shoah. It's hard to forget it when the people putting Tfillin away on either side of you have numbers tattooed on their arms. It's hard to forget it when everyone you know lost someone. It's hard to forget when your grandfathers tell you stories about fighting in the US Armed Forces.
When I was a small child there was a cliche that went like this:
Child: Why is there a Mother's Day and a Father's Day but no Children's Day?
Parent or Grandparent: Because EVERY day is Children's Day.
Now, this is no longer wholly accurate (Children's Day is November 20th), it's the same mindset I apply to Yom HaShoah.
EVERY day is Holocaust Remembrance Day.
(What is sad is that my daughter's generation may have a real need for a Yom HaShoah, just as we seem to now need a Children's Day.
But more on that in another post)
posted by - Typo Lad | 7:31 AM
4 Comments:
What is sad is that my daughter's generation may have a real need for a Yom HaShoah, just as we seem to now need a Children's Day.
I am afraid that if our children require a Yom HaShoah to remember the Holocaust, then _their_ children won't even have that. As we get further away from the Holocaust, it becomes more and more impersonal, until it becomes akin the Progroms or the expulsion from Spain - a sad event, but one that happened "a long time ago".
While it is very easy to pin the blame on the "survivor" generation for this loss by not discussing it, I believe that at least part of the blame must reside on us for not doing our part to educate the next generation. I have a great-uncle that survived the Holocaust. Unfortunately, life has been difficult to him and he suffers from a severe chronic depression. I visit him when I'm in town, and my siblings visit him on a regular (but infrequent) basis. But when my sisters are in town with their children they won't bring their (young) children to visit him, simply because it is a VERY depressed atmosphere, and certainly not where you want a 5-year-old.
I am not faulting their position and, when IY"H I have children, I will probably do the same. But it does bring to mind an old Megama (Moshe Yess) song (snipped for brevity):
...
And he spoke about his life in Poland,
He spoke, but with a bitter memory.
And he spoke about the soldiers who would beat him;
They laughed at him, they tore his long black coat.
And he spoke about a synagogue that they burned down,
And the crying that was heard beneath the smoke.
...
But many winters went by,
And many summers came along,
And now my children sit in front of me.
And who will be the Zaide of my children,
Who will be their Zaide, if not me?
Who will be the Zaides of our children,
Who will be their Zaides, if not we?
And I wonder, what effort are we putting in to teach our children? If we rely solely on school classes and musuem exhibits, the Holocaust will have no more "realism" to our children than any other history lesson. At what point do the Holocaust museums become just another part of history, and how close are we?
If we need a Yom HaShoah in order to remember, maybe it's already too late.
The full name is actually "Yom Hazikaron LaShoa V'laG'vura," which is usually translated "Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day." That's part of the problem here in Israel: the Shoa can only be seen through the lens of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 99% of Jews did not die with weapons in their hands; so what? Whether it was someone guarding Mila 18 or a three-month-old that starved in the Lodz ghetto or a 75-year-old grandmother who was gassed at Auschwitz, they were all martyrs and they were all heroes. If we needed a day--and there certainly have been many added since the destruction of the Temple--the Knesset picked the wrong one. Of course I stand for the siren, but the rest strikes me as empty.
A lot of religious people observe Asara b'Tevet as Yom HaShoa, since it is a fast day which the Chief Rabbinate designated as Yom HaKaddash HaK'lali, the day to say Kaddish for anyone whose yahrtzeit is unknown.
I think it's inevitable that the Holocaust will become history; so will the War of Independence. The question is: will it become living history or dead history? You can't tell your kids that what happened 65 years ago is relevant, but what happened in 70 or 1648 is not. We must use the Holocaust, which is so well-documented, to connect to other Jewish tragedies, just as we use modern miracles to connect to other Jewish triumphs.
Just don't forget Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut (next Tuesday and Wednesday)!
Thank you for such a thoughtful post. I have nothing more to add.
And welcome to the Jewish blogging world.
If children currently in middle school are in the same generation as your daughter, yes, it's needed. Here's an article about local observance by the city government and local middle and high school students. Here is an excerpt that I found particularly pertinent:
Always, he says, children ask about the tattoo.
"An adult may look at (the Holocaust) from a historical perspective, a global perspective," he says, "but a young person looks at it from their own tiny little world."
They try to understand it through what they know of hunger, of separation, he says. Looking for a number etched on an arm or knowing exactly what food he ate in the camp -- those details help them grasp, on their own level, this dark part of history.
"(Before we studied it), I didn't know they had these concentration camps. I knew they captured the Jews, but I didn't know they actually tortured them," says Nicholas Burke, a seventh-grade Clay Intermediate student.
His class read "The Diary of Anne Frank" and Elie Wiesel's "Night." They watched documentaries. For Nicholas, in the end, there was one thing he found most compelling:
"How people survived it."
It's little things, the details, that make it more than a big bad incomprehensible thing that happened back in history. Heck, I have a hard time conceptualizing 6 million, and I'm 23. When I was in high school, some exchange students brought with them photographs from a project/display they had done on the holocaust, particularly focusing on children. Photos of piles and piles of old shoes made several of us run to the bathroom to cry and be sick.
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