Yom HaShoah and the Valley of the Dry Bones

This evening begins Yom HaShoah, the day we remember the Holocaust and the tragic loss of one-third of our Jewish brethren, together with the generations unborn and uncounted that would have come from them. In the following piece, culled from the Destiny Foundation archives, Rabbi Wein speaks of what this day means to him, and of how he was able to find hope and resilience even among the ashes of the destroyed generation.

The advent of Yom HaShoah this week always engenders within me an inner turbulence and discomfort. It is not only the fact that the Holocaust destroyed six million innocent people simply because they were Jews—a  third of our nation and co-religionists-though that alone causes me to have great angst in my soul. Human beings are somehow built to withstand tragedy—even enormous indescribable tragedy—and to continue with life. Rather, part of my discomfort is that I, and I think the Jewish people generally, have not found a truly meaningful way of commemorating this historic tragedy. 

All  the Holocaust museums worldwide, and especially Yad Vashem here in Jerusalem, are magnificent in their historic presentation of the awful facts of the Holocaust. But one never leaves the museums with a sense of comfort or even consolation—let alone closure. There is no museum that can speak to the soul of the Jew. It speaks to our senses, even to our intellect, to our hearts, but somehow never to our soul. And it is that emptiness deep within our soul that gnaws at us and leaves us unfulfilled, no matter how magnificent the museum or meaningful the memorial ceremony may be. 

There are numerous groups within the Jewish society that do not participate in Holocaust memorial days or events. Many reasons are advanced for this seemingly insensitive behavior, none of which are satisfactory to my mind or soul. Yet I feel, deep down in my being, that the spiritual and soulful emptiness that always accompanies these commemorations reflects the absence of so many Jews. 

I say this not in criticism of any of the commemorations. They have an impossible task and therefore one should almost expect them to fall short of the mark. But the intellectual acceptance of this fact still does little to quiet the turmoil in my soul. 

I have always identified myself and our post-Holocaust generations with the great imagery of the scene described by the prophet Yechezkel. The prophet views a large valley covered by bleached scattered human bones. The Midrash teaches us that these were the remains of the tens of thousands of the tribe of Joseph who attempted to escape Egyptian bondage before the actual redemption from Egypt by Moses took place. They had fallen victim to the ravages of the desert and the enmity of the pagan tribes that persecuted them. The prophet sees no hope for their revival. After all, by his time they have already been dead for millennia. And the prophet also senses that they have never properly been mourned and commemorated. 

The Lord informs the prophet that these bones are symbolic of “the entire household of Israel.” The household of Israel is itself overwhelmed with its anonymous dead who have no graves or monuments to somehow mark the fact that they once lived on this earth. The prophet despairs of their revival or continuity. But the Lord tells him to prophesy over the dry bones and restore them to their physical human form. Then the spirit of the Lord enters them and they come back life and rise up from the valley floor as a mighty host. 

The prophet does not tell us what the end of this story was. What happened to this mighty host of newly and miraculously revived Jews? The Talmud offers two different insights on this matter. One is that the revival was only a temporary phenomenon and that they all reverted immediately to being dry dead bones. This opinion was contradicted by the sage Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira. He rose in the study hall and stated: “God forbid that we should advance such a pessimistic opinion. Rather, they married, raised children and lived a full life thereafter. And I am a descendant of theirs and as a proof of the matter I hold in my hand the tefillin of my ancestors [that they themselves wore.]” 

I feel that the only closure that can reach our soul regarding Jewish tragedy is the recognition of the continuity of generations and tradition that binds the Jewish people together. Our past, those that are gone and even those who are unknown to us whose ashes and bones litter the landscape of a cursed continent, live on through us - through our achievements and struggles on behalf of Torah and Israel. 

We wear their tefillin, many of us literally, all of us figuratively. This realization regarding the tefillin will always speak to our souls and help us to truly commemorate the Holocaust and the resilience of the Jewish people in overcoming a tragedy of even such incalculable dimensions.

Days of memory

Now that we have passed Pesach and entered the zone of Sefirat HaOmer, a sequence of special calendar dates will soon be upon us.  In a piece written some years ago for the Destiny Foundation, Rabbi Wein explains.

These few weeks are crowded with special days of memory here in Israel. Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron L’Chalellei Tzahal, and Yom HaAtzma’ut come upon us in swift succession. They are really the framework for the Israeli psyche—both political and national—that governs our national mood and policies. The rest of the world does not, and perhaps cannot, understand where we are coming from. 

Yom HaShoah has taught us that if someone arises and, as a matter of principle, means to exterminate the Jewish people, there are no real protectors in the world on whom we can rely upon to arise and use force to defend us. Yom Hashoah comes to remind us that reality differs from the naive hopes on which we would so much like to rely. The fecklessness of the world in the face of militant Islam, unabating terrorism, and rogue nuclear armed states inspires little confidence here in Israel; there is no comfort for us in platitudes and statements about commitments to Israeli security. We may say “never again” but deep down in our hearts we know that “again” remains, God forbid, a distinct possibility. 

The world wants us to get over the Holocaust while at the same time creating a scenario that constantly reminds us of the Holocaust. People who are bitten by large dogs do not walk on the same side of the street where rottweilers are present. 

The Jewish people have paid a heavy price for maintaining our little state. Tens of thousands of Jews have been killed and continue to die for its preservation. The Arab world has basically never come to terms with the reality of the existence of the State of Israel. Constant war, mindless terrorism, unceasing incitement, never-ending accusations, fabrications and biased UN resolutions have been the daily fare of the State of Israel since its inception. 

We can never, God forbid, lose a war—but we are never allowed to win one either. So Yom HaZikaron L’Chalellei Tzahal becomes tragically a regular occurrence in our lives. Golda Meir may have famously expressed her regrets over the deaths of the Arabs in their struggles against our existence. But the Arabs have never expressed such sentiments. 

The Ayatollahs of Iran have said that they were willing to lose fifteen million(!) Iranians in order to eradicate the State of Israel. It is hard to see how one can come to an accommodation with such bloodthirsty and uncaring fanatics who value human life, theirs and certainly ours, so cheaply. So Yom HaZikaron comes to remind us of the real world and of the heartbreaking cost that Israel paid and pays to survive in that world. 

Again, pious platitudes about peace do not change the reality of murderous intent on the ground. We have been down that road too many times in the past to be seduced to go there again. 

The miracle of the past century was and remains the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel. Yom HaAtzma’ut has to be viewed in that light. The tragedy is that this miracle, unlike Chanukah and Purim, had no religious leadership that could have cloaked it with the necessary ritual that would have made the day so meaningful to all sections of Israeli and Jewish society. Having a barbecue in the park hardly makes it a memorable day, a tradition of observance that can be passed on to later generations. 

Those of us who were alive when the State came into being and experienced all the pangs of its establishment are a fast-disappearing breed. The deniers amongst us, and certainly in the non-Jewish world, already distort and falsify the story. The victim has become the oppressor and Goliath struts around the world stage as David. Yom HaAtzma’ut should come to remind us of the real story, of God’s grace unto us in a dismal century, of Jewish heroism and purpose and of triumph against all odds and powerful enemies. 

It should also remind the world that even though it is popular and oh-so-politically correct and progressively noble to damn Israel, in the long run it is highly counterproductive to do so. So let us take these days to heart and stand tall for our God and land.

Tragedy and the human psyche: Acharei Mot 5784

 The Torah has already described the tragedy of the family of Aaron, when his sons Nadav and Avihu died while burning incense on the day the Mishkan was finally dedicated. Why then does the Torah return to the subject again in this week’s Torah reading? This repetition has enabled commentators over the ages, from the time of the Talmud onwards, to derive many explanations, laws and moral ideas from this parsha.

Since the Torah is limitless, eternal and speaks to all generations, I take the liberty of suggesting another idea to help us understand the depths of the Torah’s sensitivity to the human psyche and condition. In a subtle but important way the Torah emphasizes here that, from this point onwards, everything that Aaron and his sons will do in the service of God and Israel, inside the holy Mishkan or outside it, will always be influenced by the tragedy they witnessed and the feelings they experienced on the day their sons and brothers died. Moshe comments that Nadav and Avihu were holy people, close to God, so to speak. This only amplifies the tragedy, making it harder to comprehend and rationalize.

 For the rest of their lives, Aaron, his surviving family and the entire Jewish nation will be haunted by this tragic event. It will hover over every occurrence that befalls them, personally or nationally, for all time. Everything will now be encapsulated in the time frame of “after the death of the two sons of Aaron.” And this idea is implicit in the message of the Torah to us this week.

 The Holocaust exemplifies this point. The inexplicable iniquity of that tragedy haunts the Jewish people today, even decades after the fact. It seems that every accomplishment and shortcoming in Jewish life generally, and regarding the State of Israel particularly, is Holocaust-driven. Everything is seen as being holy vengeance or justified retribution, as “remember and do not forget,” or “never again!” There is no event that takes place in Jewish life today that does not have Holocaust overtones. We are always “acharei mot”—after the tragedy that brooks no feasible explanation, constantly challenging our faith on one hand and our rationality on the other. It is as though the formal commemorations of the Holocaust are not that special, hard as we try to make them so, because every day and every event now is still just another form of that memorial.

 Naturally, the formal commemoration of the Holocaust invokes again the emotional connection to this enormous national tragedy. That is why such a national day of mourning is justified and necessary. This only serves to enhance our realization that we are all living in the time of “acharei mot”, which in turn explains a great deal of the mood and behavior of the Jewish people in our time.

  And now, since October 7th, and with the war that we are engaged in now, “Acharei mot” reflects the attitude and behavior of our people.

 Shabbat shalom

Rabbi Berel Wein