faith and the Shoah

[cellio]

When I saw an entry on the schedule called "faith after the Holocaust" I sort of sighed a little. People have been asking "why?" for 70 years and we're no closer to an answer in all that time. And while of course I understand that it is profoundly important, my lack of personal connection to it (my family was never at risk) makes it hard.

This session was excellent. Rachel Korazim, who seems to be well-known (I'd never heard of her) reviewed with us some literature and poetry, unpacking for us all the nuances that you would not know if you had not been in Israel soon after. Possibly some of this stuff is in Dani's consciousness that way (Dani's family was in Canada during the Shoah but his parents moved to Israel in the 50s for a time); I'll have to ask him.

Rachel Korazim was there too (she's in her mid-60s and remembers), so she was able to provide a lens on the time. One story that prompted a lot of this was the beginning of a book (I think book and not story) called See Under: Love by David Grossman. Just a taste: it starts: "It was like this. A few months after Grandma Henny was buried in her grave, Momik got a new grandfather." Unpacking this: "it was like this" -- do stories tend to start that way? It's a Yiddish-ism. "Buried in her grave"? Why not just "buried" or "died"? The point is that she got a grave, a grave that her family can visit and that actually contains her body, which is intact. "Got a new grandfather"? How do you usually get a new grandfather today? Through remarriage. Is that plausible here? What it really refers to (as the story later describes) is reunification; every afternoon at a fixed time there was a radio broadcast listing names of people looking for other people, and the kids -- who, unlike their parents, were learning Hebrew -- had to listen to this broadcast and tell their parents if any family members were mentioned. She went on, giving us a vivid picture of what it was like to live in Israel then. Fascinating and emotional.

Other texts included: "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Car" by Dan Pagis (allusions to Kayin and Hevel), "Yitzchak" by Amir Gilboa (the binding of Yitzchak), and "The Camp Inmate's Shirt" by Avnir Trainin (allusions to Yosef's special coat, which was striped according to the rabbis, not necessarily "of many colors" like in the musical). These are all poems. There was also another story excerpt.

Comments

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

Something I wonder about, but only time will tell: how is our view of history going to change for us (both Jews and the goyim) as the survivors of the Holocaust pass away over the next few decades?

We are seeing something of that as "The Greatest Generation" passes on. I have been privileged to know several of that generation, including one dear friend who was a Reform Jew and who served as a Supply Sergeant in the European Theater. The stories they told me of their time, and how the events of the day were viewed by those who lived through it, are precious to me. One by one, they are leaving.

Those who survived the Holocaust will be the next ones we lose. I grew up seeing them tell their stories on TV, reading their accounts, talking with a few of them. That made it "current" and "real" to me. Yet I know that the chances of my daughter having a direct experience of their stories in the way that I did is small, and getting smaller.

How will things change?