Today (the 27th of Nisan on the Jewish calendar) is Yom HaShoah, or, more fully, Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve’laG’vurah / יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה / Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. The 27th of Nisan was chosen when this became a national holiday in the young state of Israel in 1953, because it was the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in 1943. On this day, we remember the approximately six million Jews and five million others who perished as a result of the horrific antisemitic and hateful ideologies of Nazi Germany and its accomplices. Thirteen million lives destroyed simply because they were Jews (or others considered undesirable by those in power). However, because Judaism sagaciously holds the complexities and coexistence of sorrow and joy, destruction and celebration, persecution and resistance, despair and hope, Yom HaShoah is also Israel’s day of remembering those who bravely resisted, even against devastating odds.

On Yom haShoah, many of us light a memorial (yahrzeit in Yiddish) candle and recite Kaddish Yatom (Mourner’s [literally Orphan’s ] Kaddish). You can do this virtually at Illuminate which also provides each participant with a name from the Yad VaShem database so that each of us is lifting the soul of a particular person killed in the Shoah. For the first time in nearly eight months, it feels authentic to commemorate a holiday.

Since October 7th, I have struggled to find meaning in each Jewish holiday that has arrived. Even as I have fulfilled my obligations as a rabbi, each holiday, has held diminished light this year. My colleagues and I have wrestled, just as so many of you have wrestled, with finding a way to fit our typically joy-filled perennial holidays into a year of conflict and confusion. A litany of assaults have diminished my creativity and capacity:

• The ghastly, unbridled, blood-thirsty hatred and hideous cruelty of the Hamas terrorist attack on what was to be Simchat Torah. The grizzly murder of over 1,200 and taking of hostages, so many of whom are still captives, was an assault on peace and stability. It was NOT the war mongers and hard-line nationalists who were attacked, but peace-loving Israelis who actively supported a two-state solution that would address the needs of their Palestinian neighbors, just a few miles west. 
• The nearly immediate and worldwide abandonment of empathy for Israelis and Jews by those who have been our coalitions and communities for decades.
• The impact of the ongoing war on Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including the enormous loss of life, displacement, and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza in the name of “eliminating Hamas.”
• The intractable and deadly stance of nationalists in power both in the Israeli government and in the leadership of Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls Gaza.
• The normalization, and in some cases, the admiration of a terrorist organization (Hamas) as a voice for Palestinian rights and a valid partner in de-escalation of tensions in the region.
• The lack of appreciation for nuance and learning that could lead to meaningful dialogue across difference even in our most elite academic institutions.
• The ugliest of rhetoric spewed daily in all sorts of sacred spaces, from schools to kitchen tables to the halls of government and religious institutions by those who hate Jews, and by those who are using Jews in this moment (eg. white, Christian nationalists), and by Jews. This is certainly what pains me the most deeply … the lies and dehumanization and fallacious righteous indignation.

In the light of so much death and destruction and displacement in Gaza and the intractable voices within Hamas and the coalition leading Israel at the moment, Purim felt ridiculous even as the farce that it is meant to be, and even the beloved festival of Passover felt twisted because rather than being who we have always been in this biblical narrative, we were Pharaoh this year!

So today, 212 days into this war (one of too many that Israel has encountered in its short history of Statehood), it feels perfectly real and meaningful to sink into Yom HaShoah. A day of mourning, remembering the worst of human behavior and the bravery and all the assistance that led to the end of the Shoah, feels authentic.

Shoah means catastrophe/utter destruction in Hebrew. Today, is our collective (Jewish) day to honor those who died in the Shoah (13 million Jews and others who were “othered” by the Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers). Although we are more familiar with the word Holocaust, this is a Greek word meaning “sacrifice by fire.” Language is powerful and etymology demonstrates the nuance of language. I cannot begin to think of ovens, flames, and ashes of the concentration camps as being places of sacrifice. The word Sho’ah feels much more appropriate as a testament to the human atrocities and degradation. In addition, as a lover of our inheritance of Hebrew as an ancient and resurrected language, it feels much more fitting to use a Hebrew word to describe such an existential assault on our People’s existence in the world, and on the human dignity of so many others.

It is meaningful to note that the Arabic word that is used to describe the displacement and degradation of the Arabs who lived in the British Mandate of Palestine when Israel became a State in 1948, is Nakba – which also means catastrophe. It is incumbent upon us, as a People who suffered the catastrophic inhumanity of the Shoah, to appreciate the devastation felt by Palestinians, and to listen to their experiences and appreciate their history as we expect others to listen to and appreciate ours.

Over the past many months, I have listened to individuals, organizations, and media flatten the memory of our Jewish history, likening the devastating assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza to the Shoah. I have listened, most recently, to college students, professors, and political leaders — those with the world’s greatest access to educational materials that explicate the whole of human history, geo-politics, religion, and social science and how all of these operate together to create and overcome the most hideous moments of collective human behavior — continue to conflate truths that they carefully select to fit a desired narrative. And yet, the convenient and pernicious flattening of different narratives continues on both ends of an untempered nationalist agenda — Israeli and Palestinian.

Next week, there are two additional modern Jewish holidays to examine in the light of current events. One of the organizations that gives me the most hope in these difficult days is Combatants for Peace. I first learned from them while I was in Israel in 2017 and I continue to draw strength from their mighty example.

“In 2006, Israelis and Palestinians who were born into conflict and formerly faced one another as sworn enemies, chose to do the unimaginable. A small group of former enemy combatants – Israeli soldiers from elite military units and Palestinian fighters, many of whom served years in Israeli prisons – began meeting one another in secret to challenge their fate and the violent status quo. Through many courageous meetings, a transformational journey began to unfold. These fighters and soldiers once committed to armed battle laid down their weapons to join forces and nonviolently co-resist the occupation, leading to the creation of Combatants for Peace. Today, our movement consists of former fighters, refuseniks, and nonviolent activists committed to co-creating a just peace.”

Combatants for Peace and The Parents Circle-Families Forum (a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization of families, all of whom have lost family members in the ongoing conflict )hosts an enormous Joint Memorial Day Ceremony and a Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony. Seeing people who have been directly impacted in the most devastating ways by the ongoing conflict working together and having difficult conversations while holding shared values of life’s sanctity, human dignity, compassion, and lovingkindness, gives me great hope that the world looks more like what they are doing than we might believe. I invite you to join me in seeking these qualities and opportunities for meaningful conversation.

Shavua tov,

Rabbi Jessica