Holocaust Memorial Day and the Forgiveness Project –

by Rabbi Alexandra Wright

i chamocha ba’elim Adonai! Mi kamocha ne’dar ba’kodesh.  Nora tehillot oseh fele!  “Who is like You, Eternal One, among the gods people worship?  Who is like You, glorious in holiness, awesome in splendour, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15.11)  It’s hard not to break into song as one recites these familiar words, found in our daily and Shabbat liturgy and of course in our magnificent Torah portion for this morning – Shirat Ha-Yam, the Song at the Sea.   In the midst of the poetic, celebratory rendering of the crossing of the sea, with its almost chilling, but exalted language, the poet – as it were – breaks off to affirm with utter conviction and categorical praise, God’s incomparability.  The response to his rhetorical question is blatant – can there possibly be any other being whose power is equal to the might and awesomeness of God?  And that is certainly the meaning of these verses in the context of our liturgy in the blessing that follows the Shema as well: “We have no Redeemer but You.  You redeemed us from Egypt, and freed us from the house of bondage.  Then, with great joy, Moses, Miriam and all Israel together sang to You this song…”     There are times when the music of these verses reflects their triumphant and uplifting quality, but there are also times when we sing these words to a tune full of yearning.  Over the past few months, listening to the different versions, I have been asking myself, why might a composer see these words suffused with longing, almost sadness?  Is it a feeling of nostalgia for the past?  Or did the composer feel somehow that the question, far from being a rhetorical one in the context of the liturgy, was a real one – a question that gave expression to the doubts of our own faith, perhaps?  As if to ask: can it be possible that there is still a God who is like the God at the sea, parting its waves, shattering the foe, piling up the waters to stand straight like a wall?

Then yesterday by chance I found a rabbinic commentary that reflected exactly the pathos of one of the pieces which we sing.  It is found in one of the earliest collections of midrashim, known as the Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael.  The commentator takes the opening words of the verse Mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai and with a stroke of genius, or perhaps tremendous licence, re-punctuates the word ba’elim as ba-illem which then slips into the plural form ba’ill’mim, to mean “Who is like You, Eternal One among the mute?” The midrash continues in the form of a rebuke to God: “You hear the suffering of your children and yet you are silent, as it is written in Isaiah (42.14): “For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself…”  Later on the Talmud develops this interpretation, helping us to see the verses not as a song of triumph, but as a lament to God: “Who is like You, mighty in self-restraint, you heard the blaspheming and insults of Titus who desecrated the Temple, but You kept silent” (Gittin 56b).  Great may have been God’s intervention in the course of human events in the past, but we are provided with no assurance for the future.

Such an interpretation resonates deeply with us today and particularly as we approach the national commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day which falls this Thursday.  God’s silence or self-restraint in the face of Auschwitz is a subject with which scholars and theologians have long wrestled.  For many years after the end of the Shoah, there was a sense that God’s presence had somehow been hidden from humanity, that God’s voice had been muted by the cacophony of evil and the inversion of all moral values.  But there were other silences too: the silence of bystanders who did little or nothing to help their neighbours, the silence of the dead, and the silence of those who survived the war, intent upon burying their past, their names, rebuilding their lives and terrified that one day the darkness of that silence would open its mouth and consume them.  “No period,” says Alan Bennett of his play ‘The History Boys’, “is so remote as the most recent…the immediate past is dead ground.”  Perhaps that is why it took so long for survivors and their children to find their voices.  There was no context for this genocide, no perspective, nothing redemptive, or so it seemed, for all had been lost, what was there in history to compare with its magnitude, its terror and callous brutality?

And there was our silence too around the survivors.  How could we ask them about their lives?  We couldn’t conceive of touching even for one moment that branded scar, that was still too raw and painful in their lives.  And yet, as the decades have passed, as the black box of the past has been opened, my generation and our children’s generation have witnessed to the openness and eloquence of the survivors, to their ability to share their stories of being strangers in a strange land and of allowing us to see and even touch their healing wounds.  It is humbling to listen to a story of separation and profound loss and then to feel so palpably the acknowledgement of those – particularly young Germans – who want to seek reconciliation, who want to express their shame and their hurt for what their parents’ and grandparents’ generations participated in.  One is left both with a deep sense of sadness and immeasurable loss, but also an affirmation of faith and hope and an absence of revenge and bitterness.

I am very grateful to a number of members of our own community who have offered to speak of their experiences during the War to groups of teenagers who will be visiting the synagogue this week.  And I feel particularly indebted to them for their generosity in sharing their platform with the exhibition which will be on show from tomorrow: ‘The F Word: Images of Forgiveness’ which I spoke about on Kol Nidre.

The coming together of this exhibition with Holocaust Memorial Day and the participation of the speakers is not a comfortable association, and one or two people have expressed their discomfort with the coalition of activities and exhibition which we are offering this week at the synagogue.  Bertha Leverton, whose book ‘I came alone’ told the stories of many Kindertransport, including Rabbi John Rayner’s journey, rang me earlier on in the week to express her disapproval of The Forgiveness Project being linked with Holocaust Memorial Day.   There were two objections: how can the Holocaust be spoken of in the same breath as other genocides?  And how can the word Holocaust be used in the same breath as the word ‘forgiveness’?   Although it was an amicable discussion, I was left with the distinct feeling that somehow I was betraying the memory of the victims of the Shoah and denying the feelings and courage of the survivors.

I do acknowledge Bertha’s point of view.  There are those who would speak of the Shoah in the language of our liturgy – unique, incomparable, unparalleled in its evil and its destruction of European Jewry.  And the last thing I would want to do would be to diminish the memory of the victims or deprecate the stories of the survivors.

And yet, I must be very honest with you.  My great question about the national Holocaust Memorial Day, which I distinguish from our own commemoration and remembrance of the dead on Yom Ha-Shoah, is whether it should be exclusively about the Holocaust and the Jews as Bertha Leverton suggests, or whether it should help us create a connection with other peoples, other individuals who have experienced the actual or attempted genocide of their people, who have been singled out for their ethnic or religious identity?  And I worry that the vocal, empowered and influential community of which we are a part, will regress to becoming again, a community of victims, and characterized by that victimhood.    Holocaust Memorial Day is there to remind us about the Shoah, about those who suffered and those who helped, but it is also to help us identify with other victims; Cambodia, central Africa, Bosnia are all places whose people have suffered genocides and ethnic cleansing.   The inclusion of a Rwandan woman on our panel on Wednesday evening is precisely to help us connect with communities and peoples beyond our own.  I am clear that our own experience gives us a responsibility beyond our own community.

The issue of forgiveness is a valid one.  It is not a synonym for forgetting, nor does it preclude justice.  I think the title of the exhibition which includes the words ‘Images of Forgiveness’ is something of a misnomer in this context as I hope you’ll see tomorrow evening at the opening or on Wednesday evening at our panel discussion.  Actually, the photographs are about reconciliation, about seeking alternatives to violence, about resolving conflict and working through terrible pain.  They are also about revenge and bitterness.  It isn’t always easy to let go of the grudge and forgive, and sometimes – and in the context of the Shoah this is true – it is not appropriate for those unconnected with the victims to offer the gift of forgiveness. 

And here let me return to the text of the Song – Mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai or, if you prefer the reading, Mi chamocha ba’ill’mim Adonai – who is like You among the mute, O Eternal One?  Sometimes, our forbearance, our willingness to endure silently and exonerate the acts we see performed to others, may lead to callous indifference.  The lament of this verse is a lament for our lack of protest and indignation when we witness injustice and cruelty and an expression of grief for what happens when human life is no longer seen as a value in itself.

Let us pray that this coming week and Holocaust Memorial Day in particular will remind us sharply of the dignity of all human life, the need for tolerance and openness in a diverse and rich society, an ethical restraint and a moral sensitivity in all our words and deeds.

22nd January, 2005