July 3, 2016

 

Dear Friends,

 

Do you remember when you first learned about the Holocaust?  I do.  I remember where I was, too.  I was sitting in the basement of my childhood home in Philadelphia. I was reading about how some Jews were forced to hide underneath barns or in cavities in forests - sometimes for months or years -- to escape the Nazis.  I looked around at the spare furnishings in my basement, and, with a shiver, wondered: Could I survive hiding in a basement like this -- much less, literally, in a hole in the ground where I wasn't able to see the light of day -- for months or years? 

 

Around the same time, I remember watching "The Diary of Anne Frank" on TV at home.  In those days, long before Meryl Streep startled America with her performance in the TV mini-series, "The Holocaust," Jews didn't talk much about what had happened "during the War" -- even though it was clearly in the background.  

 

My mother had a group of friends who would gather every few months to sit and talk around the dining room table over coffee and cake.  These friends spoke English with a foreign accent:  German, Hungarian or vaguely Eastern European.  I didn't know the details; I only knew that they were Jewish women who had come over from Europe; that they had lost members of their families "over there," and that in many ways they were starting life all over again here in the States.

 

For many of us, our introduction to the Holocaust came with the reading of the eloquent and powerful memoir, "Night," by Elie Wiesel. 

 

Elie Wiesel, who died on Shabbat at the age of 87, shed light on what had previously been shrouded in darkness.  (Click here to read Joseph Berger's obituary for Mr. Wiesel that appeared in today's New York Times.)  

Elie Wiesel gave us the license to recall and to reflect upon the Shoah (the "catastrophe.") He helped us to understand the monstrosity of the evil that had overtaken Europe and had targeted our people.  Moreover, he encouraged Jews -- and millions of others as well -- to look back at the Shoah and to ask how it should inform our lives today.  Not every atrocity can or should be compared to the Holocaust, of course, but knowing about the Holocaust can deeply inform our understanding of the threat posed by hateful ideologies.  During these past few days, for example, while still absorbing and grieving over the recent massacre in Orlando, we've witnessed the attack on the airport in Istanbul; the siege in Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Taliban attack on police cadets in Afghanistan; the killing of scores of men, women and children in a horrendous bombing in Baghdad; and several attacks against Israelis, including the vicious murder of a 13-year old Israeli girl in her bed in Kiryat Arba, in the West Bank, by a Palestinian youth who was hailed as a hero by his relatives and his compatriots. The power of hate is intense, and we must do all that we can to resist it. 

 

If there's one thing that Elie Wiesel stood for, it was the need to empathize, to care, to get involved when we become aware of indignity, dehumanization and cruelty -- whoever is the target.  In his memory, we should never remain indifferent.  Even when we are not the ones being attacked, we should stand up and speak up for the vulnerable, the marginal, the innocent -- and do what we can to protect them.

 

T'hi nishmato tsrurah b'tzror ha-hayyim: May we continue to learn from Elie Wiesel and to heed the lessons he shared with us -- and thereby keep his soul bound up in the bonds of the living.   Amen.  

Sincerely,

Rabbi Carl M. Perkins