Memories

A baby born in the Warsaw Ghetto at the moment the uprising began, turns 70 today. He will have no real memory of those moments, of those desperate times, of the fear that beheld that damned corner of the so-called enlightened earth.

Neither will he remember the bravery, the sheer audacity that it took to start that doomed revolution. But all of these things are etched in his skin, both physically and mentally.

That same 70-year-old, a survivor against all the odds, is today a grandfather. Possibly even a great-grandfather. The children who branch out of his family tree are now three, perhaps even four generations removed from the horrors of Warsaw, of its Ghetto, of the Second World War, of the Holocaust. To these children it is a story, perhaps a horror story, but it is, nevertheless, too removed from reality to drill home its significance.

Each year, as the anniversary is marked by Yom Hashoah, the number of years increase, while the number of those who retain the memories within their souls decreases.

It is a strange time in the Jewish calendar. We celebrate Pesach, not only marking the Exodus itself, but also it most significant side-effect: the creation of the Jewish People as a nation. The State of Israel's Declaration of Independence may state in its opening line that "In the Land of Israel, the Jewish People arose!" However, the reality is that we became a people far earlier, in the desert, on the route from slavery to freedom.

Only a few days after the end of Pesach, we mark one of the darkest periods in our history - the Holocaust - on Yom Hashoah.

A week later, the starkly contrasting, yet perfectly matched days of Yom Hazikaron followed by Yom Haatzmaut, Remembrance Day for all fallen soldiers and victims of terror and then Israel Independence Day, complete a bizarre, jarring cycle that tells the story of the history of the Jewish people in one fell swoop.

We sing on Pesach about how, in every generation, there is an existential threat to the Jewish people, and how, over and over again, against all the odds, we seem to survive.

Never was this seen more clearly in what is still living memory than during the Holocaust, and never is it felt more keenly than on Yom Hashoah and the days around it.

The State of Israel, that miraculously came into being so soon after a third of the world's Jews was murdered, came to be not because of the Holocaust, but in order to prevent the possibility of it ever happening again.

A baby born in the Warsaw Ghetto at the moment the uprising began, turns 70 today.

They are duty-bound to tell their story, and we are duty-bound to listen. We are privileged to still have survivors of the horrors who can recount their time in hell. Theirs are lessons that we must learn, not only for ourselves, but in order to teach others. In less than a generation, we will have no more first-hand memories, no more great-grandfathers who remember the barbed wire, the starvation, the divided families who would never see each other again.

Unlike the word history, the Hebrew word Zikaron evokes more than just a narrative. It is the collective memory. It is our past and our present, and it is our future.

We do not live in shadows, although there have been dark periods of Jewish life.

We do not live in fear, even though the threat is ever-present.

We do not live in denial, even though it would ease our lives and memories to do so.

We live on, we live proud lives, we look at the past and see the unlikely victories throughout our ancient and modern history, and know that we stand on the shoulders of our forebears.

We mourn their sacrifices, we mourn the loss of so many of our people, we mourn over a million children who will never grow up, yet we know that we will never allow it to happen again.

Yehi Zichram Baruch.

May the memories of those who died be for a blessing, and may we learn the lessons of the living.

The Joy of Adar

The month of Adar is traditionally a joyous one in the Jewish calendar. Every year, as the season approaches, the shops fill with costumes; signs proclaiming “Mishenichnas Adar Marbim Besimcha” “When Adar begins our joy increases” are found hanging in schools, which themselves turn into an almost month-long children’s paradise. The children make up the rules, days are taken over with party themes ranging from pyjama days to funny hat days reaching the peak on the day before Purim where all the children go dressed up in all their festive finery. Purim itself is a two-day school holiday – surely a gift for any child.

Personally, it is the month in which I was married and the month in which our eldest child was born. However, the month of Adar is also tinged with sadness, as for one day of the month, the 11^th of Adar that begins this evening, I mark my mother’s Yahrtzeit. This year marks the fifth. As I sat Shiv’a five years ago in the UK, people flooding in and out of the house to comfort all those of us who mourned, certain faces and phrases stuck in my mind. First and foremost were the two girls whose names I don’t even know, who had had no contact with our family for well over a decade, but who came nonetheless as my mother had taught them in primary school more than ten years previously. Then there were those who had travelled hundreds of miles only to visit for an hour and then turn round and go back again. There were community leaders sat with non-Jewish neighbours who had come both out of a sense of kindness as well as for an education.

I learned many lessons that week. I learned mercy and compassion; I learned generosity; I learned the practicalities of Jewish mourning and the comfort that it brings. I learned about the sensitivity of children and the credit that, as adults, we often neglect to give them.

The Jewish calendar is filled with idiosyncrasies. Clashes of dates of a personal nature with those of a more national significance are frequent and rules are laid down on how to deal with each. In the midst of our week of Shiv’a fell the festival of Purim, arguably the most joyous day in the Jewish year. The clash of emotion was immense, perhaps accentuated by the fact that my children were young and immensely looking forward to the day itself. The rules dictate that many of the laws of mourning are foregone for the day; the mourners can leave the house to join in the communal prayers, rather than the community joining the mourners in their home.

It was through this, as well as talking to one of the communal rabbis, that I learned about the concept of compartmentalisation and its central role in Judaism. Where one has to take their personal emotion and put it to one side, acknowledging its presence but allowing it to make way for the greater, overall, mood and needs of the community. In return, the community acknowledges and provides for those in their hour of need. It works in both directions. A bride and groom whose seven days of Sheva Brachot fall around one of the traditional fast days commemorating Jewish tragedy, must also fast and mourn with the rest of the Jewish world, putting aside their personal joy for just one day.

Purim itself spells out the special relationship between private and public emotion, where, as a community, part of the religious observance of the festival is that we rally round those who have less than they need and ensure that they too have their spirits lifted and can join in the celebrations.

This year, I realised that perhaps this one particular lesson was one of the exact reasons behind God choosing for Malka bat Yisrael v’Rut to be taken from us specifically on this date.

In a world where we see personal gain taking preference all-too-frequently over the greater good, it epitomised her belief and life-long reality that the exact opposite should be true.

Hers was a life where she would put everything personal to one side in order to help out another. A life where the greater good always took priority over her own needs. A life where, in order to receive, she kept on giving. And a life, where even after she is no longer with us, her lessons live on for us all, if only we choose to heed them.