Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaShoah, From the Thought of Rabbi Sacks
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GOD AND THE HOLOCAUST
The question: Why did God allow the Holocaust to occur?
Rabbi Sacks’s answer: The first time I went to Auschwitz, I was simply overwhelmed. I asked, “God, where were You?” And words came into my mind…. “I was in the words ‘You shall not murder.’ I was in the words ‘You shall not oppress a stranger.’ I was in the words that were said to Kayin when he killed Hevel (the first murder in the Bible): ‘Your brother’s blood is crying to Me from the ground.’”
When God speaks and human beings refuse to listen, even God is helpless in that situation. He knew that Kayin was about to kill Hevel, but He didn’t stop him. He knew Pharaoh was about to kill Israelite children. He didn’t stop it.
God gives us freedom and never takes it back. But He tells us how to use that freedom. And when human beings refuse to listen, even God is powerless.
HUMANITY AND THE HOLOCAUST
The question: Do you have faith in humanity after the Holocaust?
Rabbi Sacks’s answer: The Holocaust represented perhaps the greatest failure humanity has ever known. It featured the combination of technical brilliance and bureaucratic efficiency, but dedicated to the most evil of all purposes. This really is the greatest failure of humanity that I can think of…. [But] there’s this very remarkable avenue called the Avenue of Righteous Gentiles, in Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem. Fourteen thousand people are honoured there, people whom any one of us would trust because they put their own lives at risk to save the lives of their neighbours and, in some cases, of strangers. These were beacons of light in the midst of one of the worst darknesses humanity has ever known, and therefore, yes, we can trust humanity if humanity shows itself capable of acting for the sake of others and taking risks to save others from death.
HOPE AND THE HOLOCAUST
The question: Considering the devastation of the Holocaust, how can we feel hope in the Jewish future?
Rabbi Sacks’s answer: In the most uncanny evocation of the Holocaust, Yeḥezkel the prophet, twenty-six centuries ago, saw the Jewish people as a valley of dry bones, and God said to Yeḥezkel, “The people say our hope is lost… but it is not lost because I am going to take them out of their graves and bring them to the land of Israel.”
I see three signs of hope today, and they’re remarkable.
Today we have Israel, we have Judaism, and we have the Jewish people, all three of them stronger than they ever were before.
And I don’t need any more grounds for hope than that.
Our hope is not destroyed.
☛ REFLECT
- Which question do you think is harder to think about, where was God during the Holocaust or where was humanity?
- What gave Rabbi Sacks hope? What hope can you find after the Holocaust?
- Is it important to find hope in tragedies such as the Holocaust? What is the alternative?