Copy of Wiesel s Night

Transcription

1 Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6, 2013: The Danger of Vayyidom Rabbi Eric Yanoff Copy of Wiesel s Night Shabbat Shalom. In anticipation of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Commemoration Day, beginning tomorrow night through Monday: I want to ask you to think back: What is the earliest Holocaust literature that you either remember or know of? **OPEN for ANSWERS SETTLE ON NIGHT Yes this little book really started it all the many movies, documentaries, documentation, art, and books (both fiction and nonfiction) about the Shoah. But the truth is, Wiesel didn t start writing until as he calls it my tenth year (after liberation of Auschwitz) first go round in Yiddish, Un di Velt Hot Geshvign 865 page manuscript, then brought it down to 245 pages, published in Buenos Aires. No one wanted to publish it, but eventually it was released in 1958, in French as La Nuit, 178 pages. For those survivors who mark their unofficial second-birthdays from liberation Holocaust literature did not find its voice until its bar-mitzvah year thirteen years after liberation. Finally, in 1960, the 116-page Night was published in the United States. From 1945 (and really before that, since the lack of reporting and outrage was part of the problem during the war) almost no one spoke or wrote or filmed or danced or painted or sculpted or otherwise depicted the horrors of the Shoah. And why, do you think? **OPEN FOR A FEW COMMENTS With a few exceptions, by and large, people could NOT talk about it. There was some question of language: What do we call it? The world had to invent the Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 1 of 7

2 word genocide and THE Holocaust (which is actually disliked by many as distasteful, because it comes from a Greek word that means burnt offering ) or The Shoah (which in Hebrew means the cataclysm ) came into use, as well as Churban Europa the European Destruction, using the Hebrew word that describes the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem, 2000 and 2500 years ago. But the real reason for this silence was a gut, basic inability to address the horror. Philosopher Theodor Adorno commented that writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. - This is a strong statement, given that half a century earlier, Hayim Nachman Bialik had been sent to do a journalistic, historical report on the aftermath of the Kishinev Pogrom, and instead wrote the poem City of Slaughter, saying that only poetry could capture the emotion of that violence. But the Shoah changed everything. When it came to the Shoah, as a society, as a world, we were dumbstruck. As a Jewish People, we were grief-stricken. For over a decade, there were no words. And we see this as well in this week s Torah portion: There is a very troubling scene when Aaron s sons, Nadav and Avihu bring what is called a strange fire to the altar, and they are immediately killed by a Divine fire that comes forth from the altar. **REVIEW TEXT - Immediately after, we read the words; Vayyidom Aharon Aaron was silent. He cannot speak he is lost, in his grief. And in many ways, Aaron s response is the most understandable moment in this brief, disturbing episode in the Torah that seems to come out of nowhere. What is there to say, in the wake of such terrible, inexplicable loss? But today, I want to Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 2 of 7

3 focus on the moments after Aaron s silence. Because, while his vayyidom moment is understandable, there comes a point perhaps quite a bit AFTER when that grief-struck, vayyidom moment becomes problematic even dangerous. It is dangerous because, after a while, the failure to respond becomes selfsustaining. After a while, absent any other words, or actions, or even feeble attempts to explain or at least acknowledge and record the loss the paralysis becomes all that there is and the original reason, the cause of the vayyidom, of that grief-stricken absence the original reason is lost on future generations who were not there to witness it. Remember: The silence of Aaron has much more wide-ranging implications for the Jewish People. Aaron was Moses spokesman; Moses did not speak publicly so if Aaron did not speak, there was no leadership of the People. And just a chapter before the tragedy, Aaron had been inaugurated and ordained as the High Priest the singular conduit between the People and God, especially on Yom Kippur. Without Aaron s voice there is no connection to God, there is no leadership among the people. We are at a stop, a theological paralysis. And in the wake of the Shoah is theological paralysis not a valid explanation for the byand-large lack of response during the first thirteen years after liberation? But now, almost seventy years later, we have to ask ourselves: What would have happened, if Aaron remained in that state of vayyidom? At first, yes, those who had been there to witness the spectacular and terrifying deaths of his sons Nadav Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 3 of 7

4 and Avihu would say, Go easy on the guy. Give him time it was awful, I was there, you have no idea how terrible. Words cannot describe. But then, eventually, a new group of people or perhaps a new generation would arise, who were NOT there. And they would be told by the eyewitnesses that we should respect the High Priest, give him a distant respect. And this new generation would hear the reports from those who were there and though they might grow impatient that the Yom Kippur sacrifices that brought such a strong sense of connection to the People and to God had not been offered, they would endure. They would know to treat Aaron s loss with reverence. But then, eventually, another new generation would come about and the number of people who were there for the original reason of Aaron s silence would be fewer and fewer. And the connection to that moment would be more and more tenuous a story, and not a moment or a formative event. And Aaron would, eventually, just become known as the quiet guy who did something important a while back, and something bad happened to him, but I don t know what it was, but everyone just leaves him alone. And the original story would be lost and all that would remain, would be vayyidom Aharon. Now both in the Torah, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, that is NOT what happens. In that same chapter of the Torah, Aaron pushes his sons, the brothers of Nadav and Avihu, into almost immediate service, and hints that he too would have served, had he not been concerned about his own ritual purity after the death. The next time the narrative picks up, it begins with the words acharei mot just after Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 4 of 7

5 the death of Aaron s sons and goes into detail about Aaron s exclusive High- Priest duties on Yom Kippur. The story is told and the survivors of the story are the key players not only in the story itself, but in the TELLING of the story. Elie Wiesel s Night opened a floodgate of countless works and personal witness testimony and art and film and study that all seek, however inadequately, to chronicle the horrors of the Holocaust. Had 1958 not happened, fifty-five years ago this year, then we can be certain: The Holocaust would have been relegated by now to the status of something bad that happened, that no one talks about. Enough generations have passed for that to have happened and still, it is a constant effort to remember, in order to ensure that such evil never happens again. There is a moment earlier in the Torah, where we meet a character named Deborah, Rebecca s nurse. We meet her when she dies and is buried, at a place called Alon Baccut - *TEACH TEXT: The place she is buried means the tree of two weepings one because of her death and one because her story was never fully told. We cannot allow that second loss to happen when it comes to the Holocaust the loss of the story itself. The story goes that historian Simon Dubnow, as he was led away to be murdered, shouted, Yidn, Schreibt! Jews, write it down! Write it down! He was murdered on December 8, 1941, the day that the first extermination camp was opened at Chelmno. This process of needing to tell the story is true most pressingly about the Holocaust, but not only about the Holocaust: In Israel over the past eight years, Yad Vashem was rebuilt, and a number of other museums have been constructed to tell stories Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 5 of 7

6 that were originally just part of what every Israeli knew the stories of the Palmach, the precursor to the IDF, the Herzl Museum, and others that attempt to bring to life the stories and miracles of Israel s creation for future generations who were not there to witness it, or to hear about it from the witnesses. Because absent this conscious effort, all that remains for the future generations, is vayyidom. Vayyidom Aharon that grief-stricken, awe-struck response is understandable but after some time, it becomes a self-sustaining paralysis. It becomes not a reaction, but just the standing reality to those who were not there to experience the original cause. And for that reason, Aaron and Elie Wiesel and every survivor who has ever told his or her story teaches us the need to break that vayyidom and begin the process of memory, and redemption, and healing, and ensuring that such trauma should not happen, ever again. Judaism teaches us this as well: In the immediate wake of the loss of a loved one, we may have no words but Judaism gives us words, the words of the Kaddish. Even their cadence, the sound of the words, seems to be coaxing us back, out of our silence: YIT-gadal, v YIT-kadash YIT-barach, v YISH-tabach, v YIT-pa ar, v YIT-romam, v YIT-nasei, v YIT-hadar, v YIT-aleh, v YIT-hallal: BIT, by BIT, giving us each step, each word, out of the paralysis, the vayyidom, that accompanies the loss. And the Kaddish itself is not about death and loss but about peace, and God s Presence in our lives. We need a reminder that there is still God in the world, there is still good in the world, even amidst the sadness and evil. Aaron needed that reminder to pull himself out of vayyidom. Elie Wiesel needed it, to get to the point where he was able to say, Because I remember, I despair. Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 6 of 7

7 [But] because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. The Kaddish gives voice to this need for us. And so we pray: That in the wake of individual loss, and in the generations that have followed the cataclysmic loss of the Shoah, we allow ourselves the vayyidom moment to be grief-stricken, but then we rise to the need to honor the memory of those who came before us, by telling their stories and sustaining their legacies, for generations to come. Keyn yehi ratzon so may it be God s will. And let us say: AMEN. Shabbat Parashat Shemini 5773, April 6,2013: Danger of Vayyidom Must Bear Witness to the Holocaust R. Eric Yanoff 7 of 7