Tag: Holocaust

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Prayer

Prayer on Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Memorial Day

Our God and God of compassion:

In the Jewish Calendar – this day is called Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Memorial Day.

This morning we stand – not merely in prayer – but in remembrance.

We remember the more than 13,000,000 souls destroyed in the nightmare of the Shoah – the Nazi Holocaust. Among those innocents exterminated by the Nazis were:

  • Intellectuals
  • Communists
  • Socialists
  • Catholics
  • The Mentally and Physically infirm
  • Gypsies/Roma
  • Gays and Lesbians
  • And, of course – 6 million Jews – of whom 1.5 million were children.

These numbers are not new.  I have lived with them all of my life.

My mother passed away this past June at the age of 91.  She was born in Leipzig, Germany.  She lived through Kristallnacht – the night of broken glass that took place on November 9th, 1938.  She and her parents were able to escape to America and begin new lives here – but the shadows of that night and the months and years that followed, never disappeared from her consciousness until she suffered a stroke on the day after her 91st birthday. As devastating as that event was in our lives, in some ways it was a blessing since it allowed her to find relief from the fears and anxieties that plagued her all of her life as she confronted the memories of her experiences as a young girl in Nazi Germany.

Today, Jews and people of faith all around the world remember how hatred and bigotry came together with modern technology to create a machinery of death that had never before been witnessed in human history.

Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen Belzen, Dachau, Treblinka – these  and so many other names are forever etched into our consciousness – these places of pure evil that taught  the depths to which human beings will descend in order to deny the Divine Image implanted within each of us….

In trying to understand the enormity of evil represented by the dark period of the Shoah we must accept the fact that in some cases there can be no understanding.  To state that one and a half million children died for a reason is blasphemy.  In a world where we strive to see God’s presence, the reality of evil can eclipse even the brightest flame of holiness.

Our task, in remembering those precious souls who perished, must be to strengthen our resolve to call out and combat evil wherever and whenever it arises. When we are silent, we are complicit.

Elie Weisel – the great writer and teacher wrote:

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

When we turn our backs to the ugliness in our world – we are desecrating God’s presence in our midst.  Let us remember that with the holiness implanted within us comes the responsibility to shine a light on both good and evil – wherever it may find itself.

—

Rabbi Joseph R. Black serves Temple Emanuel in Denver, CO. This prayer was originally posted here and read for the Colorado House of Representatives.

Categories
News

Some Movies Deserve to Be “Spoiled”

“Allied” opens in Casablanca, home to the most classic of World War II movies. Its protagonists, Marianne (Marion Cotillard) and Max (Brad Pitt) are spies, she on behalf of the French Resistance and he as a Canadian officer in the Royal Air Force. Marianne teaches Max how to be a good spy, which requires him to pretend to be her loving husband, and to do so convincingly. Their mission to assassinate the Nazi Ambassador in Morocco is successful. Predictably, they fall in love and get married “for real.”

The movie is engrossing and entertaining. The audience roots for Marianne and Max — for their love affair as much as for the British, Canadian, and French Resistance fighters who are the movie’s real heroes.

Ultimately, though, Max is called to a meeting with the Royal Air Force command under the guise of a promotion. Instead, Max is told that Marianne is a double agent. The real Marianne has died fighting before the movie begins. Cotillard’s character has assumed her identity. That Ambassador in Casablanca? A dissident whom Hitler wanted dead.

Max goes on a quest to prove that his wife is no traitor. We continue to pull for them and for their family, now including an infant daughter born during a London air raid.

Alas, “Marianne” has been spying — yes, on Max — all along. And yet, the filmmakers persist.

First, Cotillard’s never-named character, the fake “Marianne,” claims that she had no choice; the Nazis threatened their infant daughter’s life if she wouldn’t cooperate. But that character had been a Nazi before ever meeting Max. Worse, the film treats the claim of “no choice” uncritically. Couldn’t Marianne have told Max, the two going to their Allied supervisors together, perhaps ultimately being secreted away to Canada with their young daughter?

After her suicide is reported as Max’s having carried out his duty to execute his treacherous “wife,” we are treated to a sepia-toned ending. Sobs reverberate in the theater. We hear Cotillard’s voice behind images of that infant daughter growing up back in Canada with her single father, a wedding photograph of “Marianne” and Max prominently on display. Cotillard’s character reads a letter she has written to her daughter the night before her suicide, proclaiming her undying love.

No. Nazis are Nazis. In England. In 1944. No tears should be shed at her death, and no real Max would prominently display his deceptive wife’s photograph as a role model for the daughter he raises in postwar Canada.

Even the film’s apparently redeeming feature betrays the past. Max’s sister lives openly with her female partner, and they are treated much as a lesbian couple would be in 2016, dishonoring the sacrifices required of and the indignities suffered by same-sex couples of the era the movie purports to portray.

“Allied” deserves none of the critical accolades it has received, and its makers do not deserve its suspense to be maintained to draw unsuspecting viewers like me into the cinema. “Allied” is a beautiful love story and captivating film only if being a Nazi is less incriminating than being in love is endearing.

—

Rabbi Barry Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Categories
Rabbis

Reflections on the Rabbiner Regina Jonas Mission

I  never  knew.  I didn’t know about Regina Jonas.  That is until this summer. Regina Jonas was the first woman rabbi.  Ordained in Germany in 1935 she was a graduate of the famous Hochshule fuer die Wiesenschaft de Judentums.

I had the privilege of traveling on a special study mission arranged by our teacher and colleague Rabbi Dr. Gary Zola in his capacity as a member of the United States Commission on America’s Heritage Abroad.  This mission cosponsored by American Jewish Archives and the Jewish Women’s Archive brought together the first women rabbis ordained in each of the American denominations. We were joined by lay leaders of our Reform Movement, women colleagues and Jewish women scholars  and some of our European women colleagues for a week of travel dedicated to re-discovering the life of Rabbiner Regina Jonas.

I was so honored and deeply spiritually moved to be a part of this special trip. Traveling with our own Rabbi Sally Priesand, the first woman ordained by the Reform Movement, Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first Reconstructionist woman rabbi, Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first Conservative woman rabbi and Rabbah Sara Hurwitz the first woman ordained as part of the Open Orthodox movement and Rabbi Jackie Tabick the first woman ordained in England in 1975 by Leo Baeck College.  These pioneers brought their wisdom and experiences and together with colleagues, Rabbis Laura Geller, Dena Feingold, Lucy Dinner, Kineret Shiryon, and Alina Treiger (the first woman ordained in Germany since Jonas) and several others including Rabbi Gesa Eiderberg of Berlin and Rabbi Antje Yael Deuser of Bamberg.

I learned of Rabbiner Jonas’ courage, light, and strength. While in Berlin, we saw what was left of her letters and notes, a small stack.  We read her ordination letter written by Rabbi Max Dienemann who was the head of the Liberal Reform Rabbinical Association because she was denied ordination when her own teacher and in charge of ordination at the Hochschule,  Eduard Baneth died and his successor Hanoch Albeck refused to ordain her.  I was struck as we read the words conferring her smicha.  She was an outstanding student, writing her thesis on “Can A Woman Be a Rabbi?”.  But more than her academic credentials and her teaching abilities, she was described as “having the heart of a rabbi”.

In those dark hours leading to the Shoah, Rabbiner Jonas taught and comforted the community.  She led worship and visited hospitals and particularly cared for the elderly left behind as their children emigrated to Palestine, England or the US.  She gave lectures until she and her mother were deported to Terezin in 1942.

There she continued to serve the Jewish people.  When we as a group visited Terezin to dedicate a plaque in her memory we saw a list of the classes and sermons she gave while imprisoned there.  Classes that we all have taught: “Women in the Bible”, “Women in the Talmud”, “Shabbat and its Meaning”, “Observing Mitzvot”. She continued to bring hope and tried to use Judaism to sustain the faith of the people. According to records she worked closely with Vicktor Frankel while in Terezin.

Pioneering women rabbis on the Rabbiner Regina Jonas mission
Pioneering women rabbis on the Rabbiner Regina Jonas mission

At the dedication ceremony in the Columbarium at Terezin Sally, Sandy, Amy and Sara read Regina’s words.  Music was played by the child and grandchild of a survivor of Terezin brought us all to tears as we realized the generations lost and the generations who survived. Rabbi Eilberg chanted El Maleh Rachamim and again our group, her spiritual heirs, realized it might have been one of the first times anyone had done so for Regina Jonas.  Chills enveloped me in that space of memorial. Rabbi Zola worked so hard to make this a moment of true memorial for Regina Jonas and helped each one of us pay tribute to this holy rabbi who served with such dignity.

We went on to Prague as part of the mission.  The second spiritual highlight of this mission took place in the Spanish Synagogue in the Old Jewish Ghetto.  On Shabbat Morning, Sally and Amy led us in prayer.  In this ornate and beautiful synagogue, which reminded all of us Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati, we prayed and studied together. Looking up into the second floor was the original pipe organ reminding me of the history of liberal Judaism in this part of the world.

But most moving to me was the use of Mishkan T’filah in our worship.  To me this was a true “l’dor vador” moment.  Here we were the inheritors of Reform Judaism, born in Germany, returned despite the Shoah, despite the loss of so many, even as we rediscovered a true hero of our people, Rabbiner Regina Jonas, and we were using the siddur of our people in this holy space.  We were helping to bring alive in a space that is hardly used at all for worship, a Reform Judaism of the 21st century.  Sally led us in prayer and gave a beautiful sermon that touched each one of us.  Again I had chills to realize how far we all have come.  We stood on Regina’s shoulders and we still stand on Sally’s shoulders and the many women lay leaders who helped pave the way for all of us both men and women.

I was so moved to be a part of this mission.  I was deeply spiritually affected to honor our Jewish history this way and to ponder how each of us who as rabbis serve the Jewish people in some unique.  Each of us whether through synagogue service, organizational work, chaplaincy, writing, or teaching contributes to the sustaining Jewish life. Rabbiner Regina Jonas did it in her way and we in ours.

That is why we went to honor her life, to acknowledge her contributions, to make connections to our European colleagues, and to lift up Jewish life both in Europe and North America.

A project I wish to suggest is that we as a Conference find a way to observe her yarzeit annually.  Although we don’t know her exact date of death, she arrived in Aushwitz in October, 1944, she was another quiet heroine of our people.  Perhaps we can simply observe Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan.  In 1944 Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan was 5 days after she arrived at Aushwitz.  Cheshvan is a bittersweet month of no holy days.  And in the same way, although we mourn her death bitterly, we celebrate her historic life and the dedication as the first woman rabbi.  May her memory live as a blessing.

Rabbi Denise L. Eger is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, CA and president-elect of the Conference. 

Categories
Rabbis Reform Judaism Social Justice

What’s wrong with ethnic jokes?

When I was an undergraduate, I spent a semester abroad in Germany. I was there, of course, to learn German: that was the express purpose of the trip. But I also had felt a need to go there to find out whether Germans were a different kind of people. I wanted to see if there was some kind of obvious reason for the Holocaust.

And what I found was that Germans are not particularly different. The German university students I met were much like the students I met in the U.S. Maybe they were a little more focused, on the account of the fact that they were older. The German university system is organized a bit differently than ours. But otherwise they were thoroughly normal. You might even say: depressingly so.

The Holocaust would be easier to fathom if the Germans appeared to be a different kind of human, wholly unlike us.

While I was living there, I hung out with a group of students from a diverse list of nations: some Americans, a Spaniard, some Brits, and a German. One night we’d had dinner together and were hanging out in the dorm kitchen telling jokes in English. And so one of the students made a tasteless ethnic joke, the kind of joke that starts: “A Jew, a Frenchman and an Arab…”

So he told the joke and almost everyone laughed — or at least groaned — except for Bernd, the German man in our group. He was very quiet, and very still. Thinking that Bernd did not understand the joke – for humor is indeed difficult to translate – the joke-teller proceeded to tell the joke again. This time, Bernd slammed his fist down on the table: “I understood it the first time.”

We were stunned: where was his anger coming from?

He calmed himself and explained: “In Germany, we have a saying. Asylanten, as you know, are asylum-seekers, refugees. Ausländer are foreigners. And a Witz is a joke. So this is the saying: Asylantenwitz… Ausländerwitz… Auschwitz.”

I learned something that day.

Words matter. The names we use when we talk about each other matter. Our jokes matter. We should be careful not to hurt one another, and careful to avoid marginalizing each other.

There is, as you know, a backlash in this country to the whole concept of ‘political correctness.’ It has become popular to express disdain for those who would ask that we modify our language. Political correctness is perceived as a form of whiny victimhood.

But I disagree. To the contrary: I think, for example, that the Redskins should change their name, in deference to the repeated requests by Native American groups, because ‘Redskin’ is not meant as a compliment.

I object to the Redskin name for the same reason I object to the misuse of Holocaust imagery. I object to the Redskin name for the same reason I object to ethnic jokes.

Atrocities happen in places where it is acceptable to marginalize the other. If you can joke about a group as being stupid, foolish, or undeserving, they will be treated as such. Yes, there is a major difference between naming your sports team after an ethnic slur and committing atrocities on the basis of that slur. But, as the German example shows, it’s nonetheless entirely too close for comfort.

In other words, when it comes to hurting others, I really don’t have much of a sense of humor. We can and should do better.

On this Shabbat before Yom Hashoah, I’d like to share with you the reflection I delivered at the Days of Remembrance program in the Feinberg Library at SUNY Plattsburgh:

We approach the enormity of the Holocaust with a sense of rupture. We have this sense of rupture because the Holocaust alters our view of what can possibly happen.

Even a nation as cultured as Germany can descend into brutality, and even a people as acculturated as the German Jews can be targeted for genocide.

In confronting the Holocaust, then, we find that we have to let go of the sense that culture will serve as a brake against the worst in human nature.

Speaking from the Jewish perspective, I can tell you this: the Holocaust has forced us to reconsider our theology and worldview. What is and is not preventable? What can and cannot happen? What might we reasonably expect from God?

On the other hand, I also can tell you this: the Holocaust is not the first time that we have had to reconsider our God-concept in the face of tragedy. The destruction of the Second Temple, for example, created a similar difficulty of how to relate to God in the absence of the Temple cult.

In that context, the question was not merely the ritual problem but also a theological problem: won’t the world come apart if the sacrifices are not offered on time and in the right manner?

And the answer is no. The world won’t come apart if we don’t offer the sacrifices on time and in the right manner. The world shrugs and continues, even after tragedy, and the sun dawns again.

Yet we simply cannot abandon the project. We cannot leave the past in a clean break without finding points of continuity. We are still very much a part and product of our world. We must mourn and we must build again.

So, in the wake of the Holocaust, that means that we live with the awareness that our narrow range of experience does not predict the full range of what is possible. Humans are infinitely clever.

In the negative sense, that awareness means that we must acknowledge that the world can slip into unimaginable brutality in the course of a generation. Let me say that again: the world can slip into unimaginable brutality in the course of a generation.

In the positive sense, however, the reverse is also true.

What is needed, therefore, is a cautious but tenacious idealism: we should not let what ‘is’ eclipse the view of what ‘ought’ to be.

Blessed is the Lord, our God, who gives us the power to transcend ourselves.

Rabbi Kari Tuling is the rabbi of Temple Beth Israel, in Plattsburgh, NY. This was originally published on her blog, Godtalk: Judaism as a Theological Adventure.

Categories
CCAR on the Road General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Remarks from the CCAR Rabbinic Mission to Berlin

Rabbis and spouses on the CCAR Rabbinic Mission to Berlin
Rabbis and spouses on the CCAR Rabbinic Mission to Berlin

Remarks from Dedication at Memorial to German Resistance with Christian Schmidt, member of the Bundestag and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defense

Secretary Schmidt, Prof. Tuchel, revered rabbinic colleagues and friends, it is an honor to represent the Central Conference of American Rabbis at this ceremony of commemoration today.  We are a group of rabbis and spouses from across North America, here to explore this wonderful city and to learn about Jewish renewal in Berlin. In our few days here, we have visited cemeteries and museums, memorials and monuments. We have stumbled over Stolpersteine, read and heard the stories, and seen the signs and landmarks that record the dark history of the destruction of European Jewry at the hands of those who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. Some of us are descendants of Jewish refugees from Germany and other parts of Europe, and all of us have known survivors of the death camps and the Nazi terror.  For some, this is their first trip to Germany, which they anticipated with trepidation and at best mixed feelings.

We have also visited Jewish schools and synagogues, seen children at play and students engrossed in learning. We have witnessed a rebirth of creativity by rabbis and lay leaders and volunteers who, despite tremendous obstacles, are rebuilding Jewish life in this scarred and wounded land and society. They have taken up the challenge of the phoenix rising from the ashes of a destroyed community, and what they create will be something new and different, but we hope and pray, something worthwhile and a solid successor of the glorious history of German Jewish life.

Now, in this difficult week, we remember with our sisters and brothers around the world, the 75th anniversary of the November pogroms of 1938, which marked the beginning of the end for German Jewry.  From the 9th of November and on, Jews knew in a way they may not have acknowledged before, that the government that they had defended, paid taxes to, and served as proud citizens; that government would no longer defend them, their persons or their property. Whatever illusions Jews might have held, that this was just another wave of anti-Semitism to be endured like those of the past; that this civilized country could not possibly follow the ravings of a maniac; that this, too, would pass and quiet would return – those illusions were shattered like breaking glass, as government and its forces became the enemy of Jewish people.

There were as well those few who spoke out, who resisted, who attempted to stop the bulldozers that crushed human rights and human decency and civilized behavior.  There were those Christians and other people of faith, who at great risk to themselves, defied the inhumane rules, saved Jews, and tried to stop the madness.  Today we commemorate that courageous resistance.  They were too few and too late; their voices and their actions drowned out by the thunder of absolute power. Had they spoken up in 1933 or 1938 instead of 1944, we might have seen a different course of history. Hindsight is 20/20, and we regret what might have been.  But still, we honor those who tried, who resisted, and who paid for it with their lives.  They, among the righteous of all nations, are the sparks of light amid the darkness.

It is tremendously moving for us, American rabbis, to see the extent to which Germans have taken responsibility for their past, and devoted themselves to educating the populace of the dangers of repeating history. May these memorials serve as witness to future generations, of the human potential for evil, and the human potential for goodness.  We pray that goodness will prevail.

Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus is a Past President of the CCAR, and is the Rabbi Emerita of B’nai Yehuda Beth Sholom in Homewood, IL

Categories
General CCAR News Prayer Rabbis Reform Judaism

I Am the Glass: A Reading for Yom HaShoah

Unknown-1I am the glass

Once clear, smooth, perfect.
Protecting the store, the home,
the eyes.

I am the glass.
Shattered now, broken, sharp,
dangerous.

I am the book.
Once a source of peoplehood,
philosophy and learning.
Inspiring the spirit, the mind,
the person.

I am the book.
Burning now in a flame of hate.
A precursor to the fate of a
community.

I am the synagogue.
Once the house of learning,
the house of prayer, the house of
gathering.

I am the synagogue.
Aflame now, the end of
an era of safety in Europe.

I am the rabbi.
Once a teacher, a leader,
a dignified transmitter of Torah.

I am the rabbi.
Humiliated now on the streets
of Germany.

Forced to choose between
desecrating the Torah
and surviving the night.

I am the child.
Once carefree and innocent,
Laughing, playing, free.

I am the child.
Terrified now as they take
my father away
Shaken by an evil in this night.

I am the glass.
Repaired now by a People
that will never give in.
A window into a future of hope,
of goodness and peace.

I am the glass.

Rabbi Karen Bender is at Temple Judea in Tarzana, CA.