A Taste of Torah in honor of Shabbat
from Rabbi Avi Weiss

Parshat Shmini 5759
April 9-10, 1999/ 24 Nissan 5759

PRESERVING THE MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST

It's during these days that Jews throughout the world remember the Holocaust (Shoah).  Perhaps not coincidentally, this week's portion touches upon the process of mourning.  It can be argued that Shoah  memory, in some measure follows the different stages of mourning for individuals who have passed away. 

The Torah informs us that after Aaron's (Aharon) sons died, he is absolutely silent (va-yidom Aharon).  (Leviticus 10:3)   Silence is an understandable emotion after the death of someone so close.  This is because the mourner is immobilized, often unable to function.  Although the High Priest was always expected to continue the sacrificial service even immediately after a loss, other mourners are exempt from the performance of affirmative commandments between death and burial, a period of time called aninut.

Only following this period does the period of shiva begin, when one sits for seven days as he or she is comforted by family and friends.

Perhaps the most difficult part of shiva is when it ends.  It is then that mourners must return to their normal lives.  Indeed, as the weeks turn into months and then into years, the challenge of mourning is to remember ones beloved departed long after the formal mourning periods.

In a certain sense, Shoah memory has gone through similar stages.  For the first twenty years after the Shoah (approximately until the Six Day War), survivors, and for that matter, the larger Jewish community, was silent (va-yidom).  Survivors were still shell-shocked.  So preoccupied were they with picking up the pieces of their lives, that they had little energy for anything else.   And, it must also be said, that at the time, many were unwilling to listen to their stories.  In a sense, it was a protracted aninut period. 

Only after twenty years did the community begin its shiva by taking stock of the memory of those departed.  Holocaust studies and commemorative programs sprang up every year.

Fifty years after the Shoah, we are moving from a period of  "short term memory" to one of "long term memory."   Despite the fact that the survivors have played an instrumental role in accurately preserving the Shoah during the past fifty years, with the passage of time, there is serious concern that the "long term memory" of the Shoah will not remain intact.

History indicates that Jewish events are remembered when they become part of Jewish ritual.  Unless ritual is introduced, the Shoah will be remembered only as a footnote in history one hundred years from now.  For this reason, we, in our synagogue, have made modest attempts to ritualize the Shoah.  Every Shabbat, before the reading of Av Ha-rahamim, the prayer which commemorates the Crusades, a congregant rises to read a short vignette about a shtetl that once was.  For Yom Hashoah, we have written a seder, ritually commemorating the six million.

If we fail to spread this kind of ritual world-wide, I fear that we will return to the time of va-yidom.  But not the va-yidom of immobilization when death is so close, but rather the va-yidom of forever forgetting.  

Shabbat Shalom

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Rabbi Avi Weiss, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale
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