THE CONTINUATION OF SPECIAL and THOUGHTFUL DAYS IN THE JEWISH CALENDAR

I write this on the eve of Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Memorial Day in the Jewish calendar, which comes precisely four days after the end of Pesach/Passover, when we celebrate FREEDOM and its many gifts as well as challenges. We all go to ceremonies, light candles, listen to survivors tell their story and say NEVER AGAIN – never again should such a horrid event occur. Then a mere week later, we observe and celebrate Yom HaZikaron – Israel’s Memorial Day and Yom HaAtzmaut – Israel’s Independence Day. Wrapped up in these two observances which come on two consecutive days is the particular admixture of our losses, namely those who have died in defending Israel, along with the celebration of Israel being a recognized, powerful and in many ways remarkable entity in our world today. But this did not just happen and it is critically important that we are always mindful of the many different elements in our lives and how they interact with each other, often in complicated and extremely protracted ways, reflecting a most delicate balance and ever-present vulnerablity.

Earlier today, when I was learning with my favorite second graders at Perelman Jewish Day School, I asked the students to think about the aftermath of leaving Egypt and all that we discussed in learning about Pesach/Passover. In doing so, I made two columns on the board, one named YISRAEL and the other named MITZRAYIM. I then asked them to think of words to describe each. We began as one might expect, with the clearly identified good guys (Yisrael/Israel) and the bad guys (Mitzrayim/Egypt). For Yisrael, the kids used the descriptive terms of NICE, KIND, HARD WORKING, TRUSTING IN GOD, CARING ABOUT EACH OTHER and so on. For MITZRAYIM, such words were elicited as BAD, MEAN, POWERFUL, SELFISH, RUDE, and such. Then at one point, one child shouted out US for YISRAEL. At that point, I had achieved what I wanted. Within this time frame, one kid asked “Weren’t there any Egyptians that were nice?” Then we were really off to the races for what I wanted to convey to these very wise seven and eight year olds. We spoke about how this is NOT always an issue that can simply be reduced to GOOD guys and BAD guys but in actuality, we all have the potential to be either and elements of both are included in the complexity of who we are as human beings. We can turn too easily to the default position of I AM GOOD and THE OTHER IS BAD, whatever that may mean. That being said, this reduces humanity to what it is not – singular and easily caricatured. …

Okay, so now it is mid-Thursday and I have attended Yom HaShoah programs and taught a class about what it means to be a perpetrator or a bystander and go on with your life while terrible things happen. In preparing my class, I used a particularly chilling source which included excerpts from Daniel Goldhagen’s book, Worse than War, which shows in a carefully and skillfully constructed argument how the behaviors of a perpetrator can seep into the most cautious of us and how we, the GOOD people, can become part of what is VERY BAD and wrong. He shows how the Nazi perpetrators among many others in various atrocities were good family men, went to church, loved their families and participated in the very human actions that they told themselves were not part of the lives of those they wished to annihilate. It was precisely through this process of dehumanization that people “joined the party,” so to speak, and were complicit in the horrors that have occurred, both in the events today commemorates, and in too many cases since then.

While it is clear that those of us who see ourselves as honest, caring and good people want to (and need to) distance ourselves from what is evil, it is important to recognize its presence and to understand and feel our own vulnerability to its pull. I feel that this is the case in the country in which I live at this time. While rhetoric has reached an increasingly high pitch, and the most bizarre statements are made by the person, who supposedly represents this country and its ideals to the world – too many have reduced what is a clear and present danger to comic and dismissive antics. TOO MUCH IS AT STAKE.

In a few days when Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut are observed with solemnity and then celebrated with joy in Israel, the joining of the messages – the visceral participation in a nation wide moment of silence where cars literally stop on the highway and everyone gets out and stands at attention, similar to what happened today, will lead to the parties and the streamers and the joy of celebrating seventy years of the Third Commonwealth of the State of Israel. BUT, and this is a most important qualifier – NO ONE will not be mindful of the losses that led to that victory – both when the world realized that Jews were not safe in Europe too late and in the loss of life that birthed this country, with its good points and not-there-yet points.

I would ask that Americans take a card from Israel’s national playbook. We CAN NO LONGER afford to glibly allow that adage of old reoccur, namely that evil happens when good people do nothing. We must all act! We must all remember! We must ALL understand that if one is vulnerable and threatened we are all vulnerable and threatened! If some are not free, we are all not yet free! Only when we understand this, can we say NEVER Again (recently co-opted by just such a movement of threatened populous in the United States) and truly mean it!