A few years ago I found myself in a dispute with a friend. I had just given a sermon in which I told what – to me – was an inspiring story that took place during the Holocaust.
My friend, who was a Holocaust survivor, said to me afterwards, “Nothing about the Holocaust was good. Don’t make it sound so positive.”
There is good reason to believe that remembrance of the Shoah can only be expressed in mourning and grief. Lawrence Langer, in his book Preempting the Holocaust, critiques those who find “positive lessons” in the Holocaust. He cites an incident at Matthausen, when a group of Jews were thrown into a pit of quicklime, and screamed for hours as they died an antagonizing, slow death. And he concludes that ”Nothing we hear from well-intentioned commentator s about … the light of human community emerging from Holocaust darkness … can silence the cries of those hundreds of Jews being boiled to death in an acid bath. ”
Langer is correct, of course. The six years of the Holocaust are a black hole of barbarity, an inexplicable horror that one must mourn, and only mourn. But allow me to explain why I feel I am right as well to believe that there is more than one way to remember the Holocaust.
In my view, any moment in history can be seen from two vantage points, which I would call telescope time and microscope time.
“Microscope time” focuses entirely on a narrow moment. What did it feel like, say, the night we left Egypt? What is the experience of a day in Auschwitz? Like a microscope, this perspective of time takes a tight focus, looks at a single point in time or a brief span only.
“Telescope time” takes a broader view. It looks at an event and considers the meaning of an event over the course of a life, or longer. What perspective do we take of the Shoah 72 years later? Or how do we describe the experience of the 3,300 years since the Exodus? Like a telescope, this perspective focuses on a large area of time, looking beyond the moment to consider the past, present and future at once.
We know the reality of “microscope time” and “telescope time” from our own experiences. Even when we are observing shiva, for instance, and narrowly focus on the mourning of our loss, we are able to see a larger picture, to smile and laugh at pleasant memories. At weddings, when couples focus their joy under the chuppah, reality allows us a telescopic view, and we remember the people who are not with us.
To apply these concepts to the Holocaust: It’s true, there is no room for banal talk about the “uplifting” aspects of the Shoah when you recall the six million voices-seventy percent of European Jewry-stilled.
But when you see the Holocaust in terms of the last 72 years, another narrative is revealed. Although the world is plagued with unspeakable violence, in terms of Jewish history, things have changed dramatically. The Holocaust should have broken our spirits. Survivors should have given up hope, and world Jewry should have collapsed.
Yet nothing of the sort occurred. In the shadows of the concentration camps, orphaned survivors married and started families. Tens of thousands of survivors came to Israel to fight for the new state. Survivors around the world built communities and garnered remarkable accomplishments in business, scientific, and political life. And the Jewish world re-energized itself-after 1,900 years of exile, Jews returned to their homeland to build a state that is a world leader.
On Yorn Hashoah, we must keep the two perspectives in mind. First, we must mourn the six million. But at the same time, we must allow ourselves to be inspired by the arc of Jewish history since the Shoah, a people rising from the ashes in a manner no one would have dared to predict.
An excellent example of this quiet rebuilding comes from an obituary in Toronto’s Globe and Mail, for Eta Birnbaum Chaim, 96. Eta had saved the life of her younger sister in Auschwitz, and then came to Toronto.
“Eta was deeply devoted to her religion and family, which included six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren …. Well into her 90s, she walked two kilometers each way to attend shul every Saturday …. Last February, she chose to forego surgery when told she had an incurable tumour ….
She continued to prepare and host Shabbat suppers and made her best batches of gefilte fish and egg noodles far 35 guests at Passover …. Eta took to her bed the following week and slipped gently away, whispering her Shema prayer with her family at her side, leaving a legacy of common values, uncommonly lived.”
Eta’s life displays the contrasts between “microscope time” and “telescope time” She endured the horrors of Auschwitz, but her story did not end there. She rebuilt a life, family, and community, ensuring a Jewish future. Because of survivors like Eta, Jewish history did not end with the Shoah, and because of her that we can say today “Am Yisrael Chai “.
