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« Baseball Between The Numbers | Main | Conference Call Etiquette »

Yom HaShoah

Tonight marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Its full name, though, is actually Yom HaZikaron HaShoan V'Hagvurah - translated as Day of Remembrance the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes. The difference is telling.

In shul on Shabbat, the rabbi's drash focused on Zionism, and tried to bridge the gap between the Zionist and the, ah, less-than-Zionist wings of Orthodoxy. More on that another time. But at the end of the drash, in the course of encouraging us to go to the community Yom HaShoah event this evening, he made reference to the notion of Hitler as a tool of God. Evil beyond measure to be sure, but still a tool of God. (I should point out that this is the younger rabbi, not the head of the school where the minyan meets.)

At the time, I wasn't quite sure how to go about discussing with him the reason this reference didn't work well, to say the least, but I think I've now got a handle on both the personal and the philosophical failings of this approach.

Essentially, what I think he was trying to do was to place Hitler in the Tisha B'Av context. That's the context that says that all the great villains in Jewish histoy were evil to be sure, but were also tools of God, serving His purposes, which we can't fathom, but which generally call for Heshbon ha-Nefesh - literally, an "accounting of the soul." There are two problems with this approach as regards Hitler and Yom HaShoah.

The more obvious problem is that Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, the Crusaders, and Torquemada didn't exist within living memory. To put Hitler in the Tisha B'Av context is profoundly disturbing to people who are the close relatives of victims and survivors, because they saw up-close a monster and a pathological people, not the hidden hand of God's will.

The less obvious problem is that the Yom HaShoah context isn't the Tisha B'Av context. The Tisha B'Av context is essentially passive when it comes to the outside world. It comes from millenia without a country, without a homeland, and without power. It comes from accepting a subordinate role in the world and in history, one where the primary actors are not Jewish, or Jews acting on behalf of non-Jewish powers.

Yom HaShoah, in Israel, is actually called Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Day. It, along with Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut (stay tuned for next week) stress the importance of taking positive action, as a people and as individuals, to prevent evil and promote good. This means prayer and study, but also means picking up a gun and defending your country and your family. It is a message that is compatible with, but different from, the message of Tisha B'Av.

I'm afraid that the fact that Israel focuses on the Heroes and that American Jews tend to focus on the Martyrs says something unsettling about American Jewry - that we haven't really overcome the Galut, or Exile, mentality. That we are more comfortable seeing the world through the lens of victimhood than the lens of self-reliance. Which pretty much condemns us to relive that experience, too.

Comments

Yasher Ko'ach, J! I'm glad you parsed this out. I, too, am quite uncomfortable, indeed, with your (junior) rav's reading of the sho'ah. I hope you passed your thoughts onto him. It's really quite the wrong tone for a rav to be setting on such a day.

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  booklist

Power, Faith, and Fantasy


Six Days of War


An Army of Davids


Learning to Read Midrash


Size Matters


Deals From Hell


A War Like No Other


Winning


A Civil War


Supreme Command


The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


The Wisdom of Crowds


Inventing Money


When Genius Failed


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking


Back in Action : An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude


How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?


Good to Great


Built to Last


Financial Fine Print


The Day the Universe Changed


Blog


The Multiple Identities of the Middle-East


The Case for Democracy


A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam


The Italians


Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory


Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures


Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud