Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Notes from the Underground

After 75 years the question still being kicked around in the community is whether the Holocaust was a unique event in Jewish history, or whether it is but one of many similar tragedies of galus -- outstanding in its severity, in its magnitude, but nonetheless, qualitatively still on the tragedies-of-galus spectrum that includes the Inquisition, pogroms, etc.  The nafka mina is how to respond.  There is a long list of kinos to say on 9 Av that commemorate many tragedies -- do we just add one more for Holocaust?  Or should we be doing something more, something that says this event was like no other? 
 
There are no answers on a day like this...  only questions. 
 

2 comments:

  1. As for your final paragraph.... I think that's why "aveilus" comes from the same shoresh as "aval". Mourning is when it feels like there is a "but" for every attempt to answer.

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  2. in all of human history, what was unique (Devarim 4:32) was the Jews surprisingly surviving His voice mi'toch-ha'aish (4:33); but after that, is any single occasion when we can't hear His voice amid a consuming fire and die, more surprising than another? {did that singular hearing long ago render us fireproof? in universal solar time, no ('nothing new under the sun'*); ultimately, in Jewish lunar time, yes (chodesh: chadash, a surprising nation, something new under the moon)}


    *Koheles wrote his song of descent as one suffering sunstroke, lacking the protection of 121:6a; but the Jews, a moonstruck people lacking 121:6b, sing shir la'ma'alos (121, case in point)...

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