Will the Holocaust be remembered?

IN the old days, the following suggestion was greeted with a mixture of bafflement and outrage. Today, there is very little if any outrage, mainly because those who felt that way are no longer with us.

Which makes the point, in a way.

The passion is receding.

I must make many caveats up front. I say them with total sincerity. They are: the people who plan Holocaust memorial events do so with dedication and skill. For example, this year, at the “survivors’” event held at the JCC, every speaker, without exception, was perfect. Spoke well. Spoke to the topic. Did not drag on. The messages were pertinent, powerful and — this gets me closer to my point — heard by very few people.

At least, by many fewer than 10 years ago.

So, you will say, of course. The survivors are dying out.

Then what?

You could say that the second and third generation will carry on. And they will, but relative to the numbers of such people, the number of participants in Holocaust memorial events is shrinking.

Inadvertently, I suspect, Rabbi Joe Black made the point only too poignantly at the survivors’ memorial. He asked the survivors to stand. A few stood. He asked the second generation to stand. More stood. He asked the third generation to stand. By now, a large crowd — most of the people in the room — were standing. He did this to honor the survivors.

However, had he asked them all to sit and then asked everyone else to stand, I think he would have found the number to be miniscule. If it is only up to the survivors and their direct descendants to perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, I do not think it is going to happen.

This is not in any way to critique the current Holocaust memorial programs. The programs I attend are done with skill, taste, and expertise.

Nor do I think Holocaust museums will perpetuate the memory of the Holocaust, any more than, say, exhibits on Native Americans in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science keep their memory alive. Again, not that museums do not reflect their own skill, taste and expertise.

WHAT it comes down to, in my view, is that to be with us in perpetuity, the memory of the Holocaust must be ritualized. That which depends on the good will — or the powerful emotion — of those who want to perpetuate the Holocaust can last only so long as the people possessing that will or those emotions.

Of course, that will and emotion are passed down. But judging from progressively smaller attendance at Holocaust memorial events — and from the growing sense of distance from the Holocaust all around — it is passed down less extensively than we would like, expect and hope.

Purim. It’s once a year. It’s roughly 2,400 years old. It is with us, for all practical purposes, forever.

It is a ritual.

Chanukah. Make that 2,000 years old, roughly.

It is a ritual.

Tisha b’Av. It clocks in at roughly 1,900 years old.

It is a ritual.

When we think of Holocaust memorialization, we need to think in those very, very large terms. Not in terms of — until every survivor is gone. Not in terms of — until after the third generation is gone. Not in terms of another century or two. No, we need to think in the very, very long term.

I see no other way to do that other than ritualization.

And I see no other logical place for that besides Tisha b’Av.

The objection often voiced is that Tisha b’Av remembers a specific destruction, that of the two ancient holy temples. What’s that got to do with the Holocaust?

Well, if Tisha b’Av is seen that way, nothing.

But if Tisha b’Av is seen, as I think it should, as the day on which Jewish tragedy and Jewish exile are remembered, then what’s that got to do with the Holocaust? Everything.

Do we not, in fact, recall that the expulsion from Spain in 1492 took place on Tisha b’Av; and that WW I began, in effect, on Tisha b’Av? And that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed during WW I, and that the imposition of heavy penalties on Germany after WW I contributed directly to the Holocaust?

Are there not many other Jewish tragedies linked with Tisha b’Av?

This argument goes only so far, for the real issue boils down to the uniqueness argument. The real issue is not quantitative — how many Jewish tragedies took place on Tisha b’Av — but qualitative. If the Holocaust was unique, not only in comparison to all other genocides but also in comparison to all other Jewish sufferings, then the argument for ritualizing the Holocaust on Tisha b’Av is defeated.

Not just for the sake of Holocaust memorialization in the very, very long term, but also for the sake of Jewish theology, I think it is necessary to begin to see the Holocaust, its uniquely horrific dimensions notwithstanding, as part of the chain of Jewish suffering and of Jewish exile.

I see no other way for the Holocaust to be remembered in the very, very long term.

Let’s face it. If some 52,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors by the Spielberg Foundation, if tens of thousands of books on the Holocaust in some 40 languages, if major museums all over the world, if a Holocaust Day in Israel, and if searing memories in the minds of survivors and their descendants cannot sustain the same feeling for Holocaust remembrance that the Jewish people had even 25 years ago, then something different must be tried.

I know of no better candidate than sitting on the floor on Tisha b’Av, as Jews have done for some 1,900 years, mourning and crying, but now including in the lamentations those one or two kinot that have been written for the Holocaust. It is a start, and no rabbinic authority is needed to do this.

It should be the focus of our Holocaust-memorializing energies.

It is a ritual.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News