How have the Jewish people landed here?  Again?  And I don’t only mean again after the Holocaust in Germany in the 1930s.  Or again after the pogroms in Eastern Europe.  Or again after the Spanish Inquisition. Or again after persecution by the Church in the Middle Ages.   I mean all of it and more.

I am most familiar with the Holocaust.  I was born only 32 years after it ended.  And that was what consolidated the Never Again response into a name, a phrase, a movement.  But a failed one, apparently.  

Why?

Most of the Holocaust Education that I received was historical.  This happened… Isn’t that horrible! Or this happened to me… Isn’t that horrible! Or this happened to my relative… same conclusion.  And really, what is wrong with that?  

It first occurred to me several years ago that there was no pervasive systemic analysis of what happened in the Holocaust.  The education was not about what societal forces led up to the Final Solution or how a society that valued freedom could transform into a totalitarian regime of hate.  The education was stories.  And the conclusion was Never Again.  But Never Again is hard to implement if we are not focusing on how it happened in the first place. (Even if it was not the first time.)

I now realize that not only is a systemic understanding of the societal trends and forces that led up to the Holocaust lacking from our general response (and of course, there are individuals who have pursued this avenue of understanding, but it has not been part of the general discourse or education on the subject) but also a broad theological response has been completely missing.

Why?

Firstly, it cannot be emphasized enough that many of our leaders were murdered and much of our community structure was decimated by the event itself.  Part of it is certainly the democratization of information and the inability of the elite to proscribe meaning for the masses. Meaning that who our leaders were was no longer so clear after 1945 and who should decide what the Holocaust meant, was quite up for grabs.  The fragmentation of the Jewish world in general and specifically the Ashkenazi Jewish world after 1945 was significant.  While pre-Shoah we were concentrated in Eastern and Western Europe with clear leaders, we became much more geographically disparate in the years since, spreading from Hong Kong to Israel to the Americas to South Africa.  The focus in Modern thought on the individual meant that it was natural for most of us to focus on the individual stories as a “way in ” to a tragedy of a magnitude that was difficult to conceive of from a purely informational perspective.  People tried to distill what had happened down to a size that could be understood.  This occurred, mostly through stories of individuals which Yad Vashem and The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC have gone to great pains to record.  But anti-semitism is once again raging and the events of October 7th are more reminiscent of Germany in the late 30s and early 40s than Israel of October 6.   

Never Again didn’t make a difference.  Why?

I think this can be attributed to the largely secular nature of these projects.  Their ultimate purpose was to record for posterity a story that would otherwise have “died” with the person who told it.  The problem is that these stories are mortal.  

So what makes a story eternal?

An eternal story contains within it a piece of God.  

A piece of God that each person who hears the story can take with them.

Something which you can’t touch, you can’t quite put your finger on.  Something that touches the part in each of us that is eternal.  Some seed of Truth that changes a person and makes them understand that they are part of something bigger than themselves.  Connected to something more than just their own life.  And wanting to be better and bigger than they previously thought they were. 

Where is God in the story of October 7?

God is in the part of October 7th that began ages ago, and the part that will echo throughout eternity.

The Exodus from Egypt is a story with that echo.

And the Exodus from Egypt echoes the story of October 7th as well.  After the Jews left Egypt, all of the ancient world had heard of the miracles that God performed for us there (the plagues). God had been glorified through the Jewish people and other nations were in awe of that.  They were beginning to recognize that there is One God, One Force, One Consciousness who created the world and maintains it every second.  

But in Deuteronomy 15:18 we read how the nation of Amalek attacked the Jews by cutting off the slow and the weak who trailed behind separating them from the rest of the nation and massacring them.  The nation of Amalek was defeated the next day in an attack led by Joshua Bin Nun while Moses led the rest of the Jewish people in prayer to God in Heaven.  Despite the victory of the Jews, we read that Amalek cooled off the ancient world’s awe of the Israelites and of God. 

This story is so eternal that Jews remind themselves of it every day, reading the verses from Deuteronomy after morning prayers.  It is not eternal because we remember each horrific thing that was done to the slow and weak individuals who were targeted in Amalek’s attack.  It is eternal because there is a succinct and clear lesson derived from the story: Amalek and everything he represents is the eternal enemy of God and everything that represents Godliness in the world. (Exodus 17:16) 

What Hamas did on October 7 was painfully reminiscent of what Amalek did.  Attacking the weak: the children, the elderly, the women, the babies, the youth at a rave in a field, is cowardly and pathetic in my opinion, in addition to being just plain evil.

So I, like so many others, find ourselves incredulous that Israel is being called on to stop fighting Hamas.  Hamas sends rockets into Israel to attack civilian targets many times each day and Israel is called upon to cease fire?  I wonder if those who call for this are actually pacifists.  Perhaps just anti-semites? Or more likely afraid of something. 

Are they afraid of violence? Maybe. Violence is scary and dangerous. In the sitcom culture, all problems can be solved within a half-an-hour time slot (not even counting commercial breaks).  Perhaps they are afraid of something else too.  Perhaps they are afraid of people believing in something so much that they are willing to sacrifice their lives for it.  My daughter and all other combat soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect our homeland, our ancient birthright and gift from God.  Millions of other Jews are sacrificing in other ways to support our army.  We are sacrificing our time, we are praying, and we are donating money, clothes, food, pots and pans, and army supplies.  We are all united with one another for an eternal cause that is bigger than any one of us.  

What is eternal in this story?  The Jewish people are fighting against the desecration of that which is eternal – the image of God in each and every human being, dignity, respect, and common decency.  All those things need to be restored and tolerance for what Hamas stands for needs to end and on that day God will be one and His name will be one.