Survivors

I write this entry during the holiday of Passover, the commemoration of the Jews' exodus out of slavery in Egypt. While I could go on explaining all the laws and customs that go along with this sacred week to the Jewish people, a famous Rabbi once said that every one of our holidays can be summed up with the phrase "They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat!" While this quote is in fact quite humorous, after thinking about it for some time I realized how scary and accurate this message is. And no, I'm not refering to the part at the end about food. The usage of the word "they" could mean any number of nations who have tried, and sometimes succeeded in, murdering large numbers of the Jewish people simply because of their religion: the Egyptians, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Spainish, the Nazis. A great deal of our festivals that are not based on events from our holy book the Torah, such as Hannukah and Purim, are about our people's abbility to overcome oppression and save our lives from those who have tried to destroy us. This sets us apart from other relgions. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that Judiasm is really based on survival, both in the sense that it is one of the oldest religions still practiced, if not the oldest, and that throughout time Jews have always been persecuted but in the end they have been able to triumph. In terms of the Holocaust, when we think of survivors we think of the few lucky individuals who were able to live through the horrible atrocities that Hitler and the Nazis commited on millions of innocent people. In our final seminar before spring break, our group of 18 students watched an interview from Steven Spielberg's Shoah Project, which is a documentation of thousands of Holocaust survivors stories. While the phrase "Never Forget" is famous in reguards to the Holocaust, we could see from this particular survivor's account that he had a difficult time remembering exacty where he was and happened to him during this terrible time in history. The human brain is not always the most reliable resource when it comes to studying this event, but sometimes it is the only way for our generation to understand what truly happened to these people, even if we are left with fragmented memories of the old and weary.

In a way, the Holocaust is as much a part of the Jewish people as Passover. While some may argue that Jews should be able to "let things go" and "move on," if we forget the events and horrors of the Holocaust then we are forgetting who we are as a people. The Spanish Inquisition, the war between the Romans and the Maccabees that is commemorated through the holiday of Hannukah, and the Exodus from Egypt are all aspects of our history, and so is the Holocaust. There is a difference between dwelling on our pain and sorrow and learning from it. I think the Holocaust has a great deal to teach us about the wrongdoings of humanity. However, I also think there is a lesson one can learn about hope and moving forward. Looking back at that famous quote, I know there will always be another "they" that will do horrible things to our people at some point in the future. This is not me being pessimistic, just realistic. Antisemitism will never truly go away no matter how many times we say "Never Again." But the pride, stregnth, and determination of the Jewish people will never go away either. Continuity and prosperity are as much a part of us as suffering and sorrow, but if we learn to take the good with the bad then we can see what it really means to be a survivor, and if we learn to listen to those who have been through unimaginable horrors then we will realize how big a difference one life can make.

-Sarah Lawson