April 21st, 2023
30 Nissan 5783
I grew up hearing the stories of survivors. It was just the norm. I remember Bronia Roslawowski who was a community personality, having arrived in Kansas City in 1947 and running a bakery. I can hear the voice of Fela Igielnik, who had stories of surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, and was in the Israeli dance troupe with my mom. Coincidentally, she also was the grandmother of a friend I met at camp who grew up in St. Louis, and it just felt normal that everyone had a grandparent who was a survivor. Of course, the stories of my Zayde, Leon Cooper, were the tragic underpinnings of my mother’s family history. I didn’t know anything different.
And every year on Yom HaShoah, I think about these stories. I think about the stories of those I know, and I think about the stories of those I don’t know; there are too many for any of us to know all of them. And I think about the 6 million stories that were forever lost, and the beloved stories that those people held in their memories that we will never know. I think about how my children will never hear stories from survivors themselves.
Given how much survivors’ stories were a part of my upbringing, it feels nearly unfathomable to know that my children’s lives will not bear witness to first-hand experiences of the Shoah. They will certainly hear the stories from me, and perhaps their children will hear those stories, too, but they will be distant, foreign even, and a time of the past. They will be hearing the stories of their grandmother’s grandfather. But I fear, truly fear, that these stories won’t be a part of them in the way they are a part of my generation. I fear that they will mean less to them, that these stories won’t impact them when they don’t hear them with the accents, with the trembling voices, the tears of remembering.
And the truth is, there’s no way for these stories to mean the same thing to a future generation. But perhaps they can still mean something, no less important, just different. My friend Rabbi Avi Killip reminded me this week that our liturgy incorporates generations of the past, and every time we recite the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, we declare and affirm that they are a part of us. We are meant to learn from them and incorporate who they were and what they stood for into our identities as Jews. And I hope, that even as my children, and their children, won’t know the first-hand stories of survivors, they will say their names, and they will weave their stories into their identities as Jews.
But perhaps, in some small way, there is solace in this very fact that someday, not too far away, we will tell the stories precisely as distant history. For this is what our people have always done. We are story-tellers if we are anything, and our tradition has survived because of our ability to transmit, to translate, to make relevant, to the next generation. It is a testament to our survival as a people. It is a testament to our ability to infuse our own identities with those that have perished. I am fairly confident that my children will pray to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I hope that I will also teach them to pray to the God of my Zayde Leon, Bronia, and Fela.
May the memories of all the 6 million forever be a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Sarit
