By Rivy Poupko Kletenik, JTNews Correspondent
As Yom Hashoah approaches I become deeply disturbed. It brings up questions about religion, God and being Jewish. I know people who have given up their faith because of the Holocaust. How do you grapple with the Holocaust and the theological complexities presented by its occurrence?
What can I say? You have asked one of the most difficult questions for our generation and for our people. Entire books have been written on the subject, not to mention lecture series and courses presented on the issue, and still the question remains.
I can only share with you my personal experience in struggling with the matter and the kinds of ideas that have resonated for me. First, let me tell you about a life-changing incident that happened to me in Majdanek two years ago, while I was on the March of the Living.
Majdanek is a concentration and extermination camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, where 125,000 Jews were killed. On a cold, bitter cold day in April I was with hundreds of Jewish teenagers from around the world. We were on a special program that takes teenagers to Poland and then on to Israel for two weeks. We spent Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, marching in silence from Auschwitz to Birkenau, and then flew to Israel for Independence Day.
As we walked through the site, the wind blew relentlessly. But you can’t really be cold when visiting the camps. Cold is something you feel when you haven’t eaten in months and you are wearing thin pajama like garments and you have horrible, ill-fitting, stiff wooden shoes on your feet and you’ve been worked brutally for hours. Can you be cold when you walk the grounds in 2002 with food in your belly, layered with sweaters and jackets and Timberland boots on your feet?
I was alone at the time, walking from the barracks towards the tremendous and overwhelmingly powerful monument for those who were murdered in the camp. The memorial consists of a massive pile of ashes left from the crematoria. At this point, I begin to hear a melody, voices singing. I was shocked and taken aback. Singing? Someone was singing in Majdanek? Who would have the nerve? I was curiously drawn to the music. As I got closer, I saw a small group of young men around a teacher. The teacher was leading the students in song.
I heard the tune but didn’t recognize the song right away. Then I realized what song they were singing. It was a beautiful melody traditionally sung to children as they are put to bed. The words are from the blessing that the patriarch Jacob bestows upon Joseph and his sons:
The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm
Bless the lads.
In them may my name be recalled,
And the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
And may they be teeming multitudes upon the Earth.
At this point I was appalled — really and truly horrified. I had made it through this trip visiting Treblinka, Auschwitz, and the Warsaw ghetto without falling apart, trying to be strong for the students. I couldn’t take another step and fell onto the ground with tears in my eyes. Every question and doubt, and all the anger of what had happened to our people became too much for me.
Who would have the lack of taste to sing a song about an “angel who redeems from all harm” here? Who would dare to sing those words in Majdanek where on one single day, November 3, 1943, 18,000 Jews were slaughtered and buried in the ditches that they had been forced to dig? Who could sing a song of salvation in sight of a pile of ashes that looms ominously over us?
Then I began to listen to the words — to really listen. It was as if I were hearing the words for the first time. The end of the song began to resonate powerfully. The last words of the blessing are “And may they be teeming multitudes upon the Earth.”
I picked up my head and looked around and saw hundreds of fabulous lively Jewish teenagers wearing the blue jackets of the March of the Living proudly carrying Israeli flags and I knew.
We were not destroyed. Hitler’s plan for our people was never realized. The blessing of Jacob still stands. The angel redeems. We are alive and teeming. We do not understand the pace of redemption nor will we ever comprehend the dynamics of the Divine plan.
Elie Wiesel puts it this way in a piece he wrote for the High Holidays in 1997:
“Auschwitz must and will forever remain a question mark only: it can be conceived neither with God nor without God. At one point, I began wondering whether I was not unfair with you. After all, Auschwitz was not something that came down ready-made from heaven. It was conceived by men, implemented by men, staffed by men. And their aim was to destroy not only us but you as well. Ought we not to think of your pain, too? Watching your children suffer at the hands of your other children, haven’t you also suffered? …Let us make up, Master of the Universe…for the child in me, it is unbearable to be divorced from you so long.”
Please think of me and the 10 teenagers from Seattle who join 5,000 from around the world as we march again this year. Look for the students’ writings and journals on these pages upon our return.
Next time you struggle with this critical issue, I hope my story will come to mind and offer you at least a little bit of comfort.
Bakesh shalom veradfeihu, Seek peace and pursue it… Psalms 34:15
Rivy Poupko Kletenik is an internationally renowned educator and director of education services at the Jewish Education Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. If you have a question that’s been tickling your brain, send Rivy an email at [email protected].