Yom Hashoah 2014 Part 2

I went to bed after my bumbling post last night wondering what I'd really wanted to say. I said some, I suppose, but there is more.

I think there are essentially two ways to remember the Shoah.

1. To name and learn about specific people who were lost, especially if they were family. 

2. To learn about what happened them -- the horrors, the stories of triumph, the lessons.

The event that I missed last night mostly would have been about the first of those. There are always survivors and survivor families at this event and I appreciate the chance to be witness to them. At the same time, I feel a certain disconnect as my family's particular relationship to what happened in Poland and Germany is a little different. My grandfather was lucky to get out of Germany early, so my family doesn't have the typical Holocaust stories to share about camps or resistance. 

I've had plenty of the second type of learning in my life. It unsettles me considerably and I don't know what to do with it. What is there to be done with the reality that some people were cruel and others suffered in ways beyond our imagination? The feeling and knowledge sits there uncomfortably on the table with no appropriate action. No amount of empathy, guilt, regret or even strength can undo the past. 

For many, the importance of the Holocaust is very much wrapped up in Jewish identity. It should be. It's part of our past. That's why I learned as much as I could about it when I was a teenager and why I know that I have a responsibility to care about it. However, all I can act on, is what I can do today for this world.

One way to do this is to follow mitzvoth and to be a strong Jew. Another is specifically to support and celebrate Israel. 

For me personally, I think I feel my strength most when I try to be an activist in the ways I discussed in the previous few posts because today too there are people who are cruel and there are others who suffer  in ways beyond our imagination.

You don't have to be Jewish to be an activist, and the areas I care about the most are not even specific to the Jewish community, and yet I feel that they do from expectations the Torah has from us as Jews to make a positive difference in the world.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that I hope the things I try to do now to help the world do not exist in a vacuum. Already I question how much impact they have, but what I hope instead is that my actions can be a Kiddush Hashem, and that by living a life of Kiddush Hashem, I can in my own way help smooth over some of the pain from the past too.