Yom Hashoah 2014

Tonight is Yom Hashoah.

There was a community wide event as always, but I couldn't attend this year as I'm needed at home.

I didn't know for awhile, though, whether I'd be going or not. Toyed with whether or not I wanted to, whether or not I had a responsibility to. I really do believe in showing up for things, and any reason that I would give for not wanting to go would be an excuse.

I feel sorry for not having gone, because numbers of people matter. I also know there are other ways to recognize the day.

There was an article in The Jewish Week this weekend about alternative and controversial ways to remember the Shoah. For example, one man talked about his plan to tattoo his grandmother's camp number on his arm. Like most, I suppose, my instant reaction to that was to be horrified, but as I read his thought process, it made sense and his grandmother apparently told him she supported the idea.

Another example in the article was a viral video of a family -- including a survivor -- dancing to "I will Survive" in Auschwitz among other places. If you read the comments below, people's reactions are generally strong to either extreme. Either they say how much they love the video, or how wrong it is for this family to have made it.

I don't know yet how I feel when I watch it. I wanted to feel some triumph, but I feel haunted and sad instead. I also am rattled by the images in the side bar of other videos. I don't feel tonight like I can open myself up to those and let me feel that pain. On Tisha B'Av I can and will, and then will rise up again. I don't feel I have the space to do that on a Sunday night before I have to enter into a workday.

But both then and now, I'm still baffled. How do I appropriately commemorate? I don't know now, I don't know on Tisha B'Av and I didn't know when I was a teenager on March of the Living either. What internal messages must I listen to in order to know if I find the answer?

Regarding the video once more, and also regarding anyone's idea of how to appropriately commemorate… I think there is a danger to being too reverent. Even in the camps themselves they had to laugh and there are books to that effect. To really show respect to those that were lost, don't we have to show respect too to the multitude of reactions each of them would have had?

I wish I'd gone to the ceremony tonight, but I couldn't. If I had gone, I would still feel incomplete.

I could have read or watched things about the Shoah, but as I said, I do better with that on Tisha B'Av.

The best I can do is to try to create a world as antithetical to that of the Nazis as I can. It's just one reason that I try often, not just today, to make the world a better place. It's today's justification for my fundraising for Tread on Trafficking to combat child sexual slavery. Even without the Shoah in the past, I would hope I'd be trying to do good things like that. If I do it with the memory of the Shoah in mind, does that bring some kind of light to the darkness of that time? Or am I disregarding the distinctness of our history?

I feel this blog post is a way of making profound excuses for not attending a community function, and maybe it is, but it's also a recognition of the sheer feeling of floundering. The Shoah is this horrific part of our past and we still don't know quite what to do with it, where to put it or how to shine the light bright enough on what we want to remember but want to forget.