custom of tzom shtikah--a fast of silence rather than a fast million are the seder avodah-the sacrifices. It is their blood from eating. spri.nkled upon the altars. They are the seh la-aaazel--the Words and speech are very important in Judaism. Judaism scapegoat. They are the burnt offerings, wholly consumed by itself is contained in the words of the Torah. God speaks and fire. the world is created. For the duration of this service (until the If there is a Torah reading for our service, it must be the concluding Mkh)we will fast hmspeaking. A tape will book of Job. Job questions God's justice, and echoes Abra- be played that will contain liturgy, the words of a survivor ham's cry: hu-shofeit kol hu-aretz--shall the judge of the and songs. Please follow along silently in the text that you world, not do justice! Job's friends try to comfort him with have. explanations for Job's suffering. Job's friends are models for the "answers"given for why the Holocaust happened. But as Challenging God in the book of Job, the friends and their answers are de- nomd false piety. In the silence we will create a space and time to reflect upon as Finally, this service also is a memorial to the life and the Holocaust. A space and time also to ponder upon the culture of the Jews of before the war in all its silence of the world and the of during those Europe silence God richness and diversity. In their lives and in their deaths, we awful years. find meaning and even affirmation of life, Judaism and The liturgy of this service tries to confpont the questions God. The service will begin when the of music stops and about raised by the Holocaust. It elements of tape God contains memorial candles lit. protest toward rather the simple -on six are God than A final kavanakz, by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko expressed by standard Jewish liturgy. Yom HaShoah calls for "The moment one begins to speak of the Holocaust, a that questioning at least on this one day in the Jewish year. betrayal has been committed. If one begins, one must The following story about a Hasidic rebbe with a com- conclude. If one tallcs of Vilna, one must talk of Lublin. If ment by Rabbi Morris Shapiro illustrates this: a "Once one talks of Poland, one must of France. If one revered poor man had appeared before Rabbi Zev Wolf for talk talks of a victim, one must talk of all victims. If one begins, one help. Beink poor himself, and thus not able to help the is doomed to failure. All must be told, and having not udortunak man in accordance with the rabbi his dignity, been told, a betrayal been committed, a betrayal of all followed the of the Thud to console the poor man has advice that is left out; of all those incidents, cities, and persons with the words, kol mher ohev Hmhem yoheakh, whomever that stand on the threshold of memory and the verge of God loves, He chastises." speech crying out, 'Do not silence us. Tell our Tale. ' This Rabbi Wolf had misinterpreted the Talmud's advice. In prayer, too, is one of penance for silencing the forgotten heaven, the words, kd asher ohev Hmhem, do not mean and unspoken voices that we are doomed as humans to whoever God loves, but rather whoever loves God.The word omit--an affirmation of our limitations. yoheakh, chastises, does not refer to the poor man but rather Holy sisters and brothers of Moriah, forgive us for to God. Anyone who loves should reprimand Him for God violating your dignity, sanctity, and privacy; but all that visiting misery on upright man. we do seeing, hearing, and thinking--we do only for the It is obvious that our Sages felt that the theology which sake of the honor of your memories. justifies God's deeds was not always applicable. There are Were all the heavens parchment, all the oceans ink, every situations which demand bold and daring challenges even to blade of grass, a @, and all persons scribes, the Holocaust God Emself, as a great Hasidic rebbe once exclaimed: "lo would still remain veiled in terrible mystery." Ll tmu kinlasp2em Elohekhem, don't be yes-sayers to God.I' Thus, in this service, some traditional liturgy is turned upon its head, a tradition that echoes a few medievalpiyyutim respondmg to persecutions in their times. The service has some of the structure of a m'ariv service, but is called seder avodah. AVQMmeans service or The holocaust is unique! worship, and calls to mind the avo& service of Yom Mark IWroWltr Kippur. Yom Kippur and Yom HaShoah stand at opposite ends of the festival cycle. On Yom Kippur, God judges us As the son of Holocaust survivors, I've been concerned and in the modah service we describe the bringing of animal with the way the Holocaust is portrayed, especially the sacrifies to bring about our forgiveness. Yom HaShoah, On ...... we ''judge" God and we are the modah service, for the six MARK MEIROWITZ, a lawyer in private practice in Manhattan, holds a doctorate in Political Science from Fordham University.

4 Sh'ma 25/492 tendency to use the Holocaust as a benchmark for every specific people". As Katz puts it, it is tbe "unconstrained, atrocity and tragedy. ideologically driven imperative that every Jew be murdered that distinguished the Sho'ah from prior and to date subse- The Problem: Blurring Of Moral Distinctions quent, however inhumane, acts of collective violence, ethnocide, and mass murder. ?%e problem begins with the blurring of moral distinc- tions in the use of language. A politician stated that an ueness: Why It Matters animal care agency in New York was a "little animal Auschwitz". In the movie Ready to Wear, a fashion Still, it is not enough to merely state that the Holocaust was designer criticized a competitor's work as "crematorium unique. We've got to inquire as to why uniqueness matters. couture". The terms "Nazi", "ghetto", "genocide" and Lipstadt in her piece in the New Republic provides one good "Holocaust" have become terms of political dynamite reason. For Lipstadt, it matters greatly for how the Holocaust with meanings light years away from their significance in is taught. Lipstadt is particularly concerned about teachers the context of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish "imparting the message that at its heart the Holocaust is just people. For Emil Fackenheim, the word "Holocaust" one in a long string of inhumanities and that every ethnic slur should be used sparingly, lest it be used in vain. Regret- has in it the seeds of a Holocaust. tably, the word and what it represents have been distorted and misused widely. Uniqueness As An Antidote To Revisionism The atrocities in Bosnia, Cambodia, Biafra, Rwanda, For the Holocaust deniers, millions died in what was Somalia, the Soviet Gulag and countless others are essen- tially a military and political conflict nations, with a constantly compared to the Holocaust. In February, 1995, among byproduct of Jewish victims and victims of countless other in Dresden, Germany, a ceremony of "reconciliation" nationalities and religions. emphasis on uniqueness and was held at which a Dresden official paid homage to Our the singular Jewish aspect of the Holocaust is antidote to those who died in the bombings of Dresden and Coventry an these revisionists. We stand up and affim that the "Final as well those killed in the concentration camps, as Sohtion" was the primary raison d'etre, even para- remembering the "victims of violence and war--children, Nazis' mount to their war effort. women and men of all nations", without any specific mention of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust or even intimating that there might be a difference between the Uniqueness Ties Us To The Creation Of The State Of Allied bombing of Dresden and the German attack on Israel Coventry. At concentration camp sites, monuments and The State of Israel was created out of the ashes of the memorial plaques do not specifically mention the murder Holocaust. It was emindy clear, most pointedly in the tJBi of Jews. The result of all this is moral equivalence and debate on the creation of a Jewish national homeland, that the relativization and the blurring of the truth. nations of the world recOgIllzed the creation of the Jewish For Professor Deborah Lipstadt in a recent article in state first and foremost because of their revulsion at the scope the New Republic (March 6, 1995), the Holocaust of the unspeakable atrocities committed against the Jewish remains unique for two primary reasons: "It was the PPle- only time in recorded history that a state tried to destroy an entire people, regardless of an individual's age, sex, Uniqueness Is Our Right And Responsibility location, profession or belief. And it is the only instance in which the perpetrators conducted the genocide for no One can argue that the Holocaust is unique and still cry ostensible material, territorial or political gain". out against human suffering including the millions of Professor Steven R. Katz in the first completed volume of soldiers and civilians, other than Jews, who fell in World his truly seminal and groundbreaking work neHobcaust in War 11. As people of conscience, Jews have given the Historical Context (Vol. 1; I;he Holocaust and Mass Death world the gift of human compassion. But saying that one decries murder and atrocities does not make the Holo- &fore the Modem Age) seeks to myexplore, by a system- atic review and comparison of the Holocaust to historical caust comparable or equivalent to other tragedies. events, his definition of the uniqueness of the Holocaust: Uniqueness is our right and heavy responsibility. We "The Holocaust is phenomenologically unique by virtue of mark Yom HaShoah each year as a special day of the fact that never before has a state set out, as a matter of remembrance on which we say to the world: what was intentional principle and actdual policy, to annihilate done to the Jewish people was special, different, unique physically every man, woman, and child belonging to a and unprecedented in the history of mankind. We will not permit comparisons to our Jewish tragedy for political or

Sh'ma 25/492 5 other purposes. We will not allow the Holocaust to interviewing, it felt like my introduction to my father’s become just another tragedy of man against man. The and family’s life over 60 to 80 years ago. We learned Holocaust was a distinctively Jewish tragedy in which the about grandparents, aunts and uncles who until then had Nazis sought to erase our people from the face of the only been disembodied names on our charred family tree earth. We must preserve the memory of our Jewish or subjects of stories unanchored to the houses and streets martyrs and not permit the blurring of vital moral that made their lives real to those of us who never knew distinctions or the relativizing of this monumental event them. in history. a We learned about fi-iends and colleagues and important teachers--yes, sometimes how they perished, but also how they lived their lives, and what legacy was left by those lives. It became apparent that memory is truly quickened, and longing is revived, even in the soil from which we have been driven in suffering and anguish.

Seeking A Piece Of Self So pilgrimage has become for me a way of returning to the site of our deeper selves. It is to honor our countless In 1992, I journeyed back to my parents’ native Hungary dead, as well as to find our way back to the repositories with my mother and father, my siblings and our respec- of our families’ memories--to who our parents and tive families. Fourteen of us symbolically ended my families arelwere in the deepest reaches of the pres- parents’ self-imposed exile from the place from which entlpast. It is to discover how their lives were rooted in they had been deported to Bergen Belsen in 1944 and the profoundly simple joys and sorrows of everyday life which they hurriedly left after the war in order to rebuild that stretched back further than our own eyes could see, their lives.\While we could not avoid the poignant their memories dared reach, and only their unspoken reminders of the horrifically swift and nearly total dreams and solitary, fleeting reminiscences could begin destruction of Hungarian Jewry, we had deliberately gone to touch again. It is the subtle intuition that we, their with the purpose of learning more about our parents’ children and grandchildren, seek of the place, among all lives there when life was normal and even sweet. the many places, where we collectively experienced our Even while their mourning was not--and perhaps could selfhood in a fdiar, safe and sacred place we Jews never be--complete, being in the presence of their have periodically called “home”. children and grandchildren seemed momentarily to free So go back with both your own sadness and your own my father and mother of their decades of sadness, longing and do not feel selfish or brazen for intruding on enabling them to speak to us of their childhood and our collective sorrow. Pilgrimage is made to places both youth. In carefully chosen moments of questioning during of memorial and memory. Your parents may go with our journey, they were reminded of people and events you, and if they do, be gentle with their grief but guide which had formed their lives before the war and about them to their almost forgotten joy. I believe they need to which they could now speak more openly. speak as much as we need to hear. If they cannot accom- pany you to places too poignantly sad, go by yourself or Opening Doors To Memory with your spouse or children. Your visits and your own Some memories remained too searing and some places we prayers of remembrance--especially in and among‘ our still could not go. My father seemed to sidestep an remnant communities there--may help you more that invitation to travel to his boyhood home in the south of stone monuments or public memorials to access some of the country from where his mother had been deported to the questions that have been as painful for your to ask as Auschwitz. And yet never before had he spoken so for your parents to answer. clearly without choking on his statements--or without us I had already begun, weeks before our trip, attending choking on our questions--of who his mother was and ~*ITYQ~to say Kaddish for my paternal grandmother. I what her life had been like. continued doing so throughout OUT stay in Budapest and For me, despite, years of wondering, listening even the better part of the next year. I feel certain I will make ...... =-...... =...... *...... future pilgrimages to my grandparents’ towns to impart in this way a greater degree of remembrance to their EUGENE 1. POGANY lrVw in Newton, MA. deaths and to further retrieve memory of their lives. 0

~~~ ~~

6 Sh’ma 251492