Latest / REALLY JEWISH with Oliver Joseph / REALLY JEWISH S1:E7 - Holocaust
Transcript
- Oliver Spike Joseph: Hi everybody, welcome back to our really Jewish podcast. It's great to be back. you're coming for the first time, welcome to our podcast. And if you're coming back for another listen, welcome to, we're delighted to have you here. This is Yair Eldan and Oliver Joseph talking about what is really Jewish, bringing to you big topics that shape the Jewish world. and talking also about our own personal process and personal examination of who we are as Jewish people and how our lives have been particularly over the last couple of years. So join us here each week ⁓ Really Jewish. ⁓ have had ⁓ little bit of an impromptu break. We're back now and we're talking about Yom HaShoah. This past Tuesday in Israel and around the Jewish world, we marked Holocaust Memorial Day. we're talking to you about what Holocaust Memorial Day means today for ourselves and for our community. Yair, welcome back. You are my favorite person this week, because we've had a couple of technical glitches, as I guess would be expected, having run a podcast now coming up on, I think this is our seventh week. Yair Eldan: Yair. Oliver Spike Joseph: So got it done. We had two recordings which did not record properly and now we're back again. So thank you again. How are you, Yair? Yair Eldan: Good. Thank you. How was it for you? How was Yom HaShoah for you, Oliver, as a person, a Jewish person living outside of Israel and religious? ⁓ I think about it, Oliver, the Holocaust for a religious person is a really big deal. I mean, to explain the horror from perspective of a religious person. How was it for you? Oliver Spike Joseph: Nice to have you. Listen, HaShoah is taken seriously, I think, in majority of Jewish communities around the world. So it's big deal. Let me just say two more words of introduction for Yom HaShoah because it gives a little of the context. Yom HaShoah in Israel, instituted in Israel, commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is called Yom HaShoah V'Gvurah And Yom HaShoah is the day memorial. Ha'Gvurah is the memorial also of uprising and of strength. And so there's this kind of like connection here to the ways in which Jewish resisted during the years of Nazi occupation of Europe. How I to it, listen, there's a Candle project. We light a yellow candle every year with names of people who have away, passed away murdered in Poland and Europe. there's a Yellow Candle project. We light a yellow candle every year with names of people who have passed away, passed away murdered in Poland Europe. and beyond it's always like a very like... and beyond it's always like a very like... know like tense moment when you take out the little name tag of the person that you're lighting for and inevitably like now we have thank God candles in our family for five members of our family to light and there's every single time there's like a three-year-old child or a two-year-old child or you know small kids and it's terrifying and like heartbreaking that should you tense moment when you take out the little name tag of the person that you're lighting for and ⁓ inevitably single time there's like a three-year-old child a two-year-old child or you know small kids and it's both terrifying and like heartbreaking that we should you Yair Eldan: Hmm. Hmm. Oliver Spike Joseph: be lighting for these lives that were taken so young. be lighting for these lives that were taken so young. Listen, I've doing quite a lot of teaching at the moment. And I'm as part of this podcast, and other stuff, I have the privilege to do more teaching than I've in recent years, around days. And think absolutely as a religious person, a part of the tension of days of memorial, just do that again, part of the tension of days of memorial is ⁓ the aspect of if you skews my French what the F like how is this possible in an ethical just world a world reigned or ruled by God that six million people could be murdered in this way the last hundred years. And could be kind of leveled across lots of different segments of Jewish history where terrible things have happened to our community. But it's kind of coarse when you talk about like whole villages, whole families, almost whole countries Jewish population being wiped out ⁓ during the Second War. Yair ⁓ I never see. very much distance between us in reality even though we play this he's very secular and I'm very religious truth be told our practice is different but tell me a little bit about how you experience it and also what what what's Yom HaShoah like in Israel because it does have a particular quality that perhaps is not certainly not experienced in the UK or London Yair Eldan: Listen, first of all, it's true that in a way we have the same worldview about the world. We're both liberals. We're both humanistic. But I think, yes, there is a difference between us. And I always remember the remark of the... Jean Améry, Hans Maier, in one of his essays he said that the intellectual, secular intellectual in Auschwitz had a severe problem in compared to the religious person who had this past and future to rely on and to speak to God and he had this conviction that is justice in the world, there is an account that we don't see something about it and it always echoes echoes to me and I think think it's ⁓ I mean the Holocaust as always is a good example for how religious is you know you know, is a function for religious people in my view as a person. It enables them to in an uncertain world, ⁓ me as a secular person, I have to accept evil as a thing in the world. So I think there is a difference. So your question, you know, there are a of powers of the state in Israel, mean, that, you know, try to form consciousness and identity. ⁓ Yom HaShoah is one of them, Yom Ha'Atzmaut the Independence Day is one of the previously memorial day, one day before Yom Ha'Atzmaut, just next week. You know, the state ⁓ very powerful. We have siren. Schools you know, making ⁓ a lot of effort in educating you know the little kids and the older kids to the essence of what it means what Holocaust means to them as Jews living in Israel. mean you see ⁓ as ⁓ think the Shoah all the time my tendency is actually to make my own my own space and Yom HaShoah, you know, I found myself in the gym after a month of war, the gym was closed. I found myself, exercising in the gym. It was great. And just think about it, in Yom HaShoah, I didn't think a lot of the Shoah. I think I liked the Shoah, but this, I mean, seeing the Shoah was a break in a way. I think it's only in Israel I can allow myself to actually feel that way. Oliver. Good. How was it for you? Oliver Spike Joseph: No, I just had this like chidush moment, like we say in Hebrew, like a kind of revelation. And ⁓ it's not profound, but there's about the person was in forced labor Auschwitz or in Treblinka or in the Warsaw ghetto or even, you know, ⁓ a very dark even somebody who was shot in the forest in Poland. Yair Eldan: Yair. Oliver Spike Joseph: There's something of that experience, however gruesome and awful, I'm shuddering as I say it, that they didn't have any conception of the of the destruction and the evil that was going on. They ⁓ the experience of the totality and evil of individual person who was persecuting them and the teams of SS and and bystanders, ⁓ even in towns who... perhaps betrayed them. but they didn't have an idea of the totality. The aspect that you're describing as an academic and me as a rabbi and many people in our community is that an aspect of Holocaust education is that you learn about how a very advanced Western country engaged all of its industrial capacity to murder and burn Jews and some other minority populations. That is, know. being murdered in the forest is awful. But when you're talking about the kind of intellectual, rational processing of that aspect, that's to do that in a totality to try and understand how that can happen in a European country. I kind of, you know, arguably like the peak of, you know, intellectual, peak intellectual moment in the advancement of European democracy and society. That's hard to... Secular, religious, that's hard to process. Yair Eldan: thinking about your remark and how Israel should be, in a way, ⁓ the universal aspect the Holocaust, the Shoah, of the destruction of the Jewish people, the ⁓ universal aspect of, or what comes out of it, understanding that evil can come. ⁓ from human beings in a certain situation, in certain cultural, historical situation, economic situation, it could come from the greatest nations. And it's under war. It's interesting. feel it in my body. It's human. It's going to and emphasizing the very particular aspect of the Shoah, meaning the fact that Jews are persecuted every generation and the Shoah is kind of a climax of this persecution. And the only thing we are left to do as Jews is to stand on our own and to use power to defend ourselves. And obviously after October 7th, I understand that a very... ⁓ important aspect and I in this podcast I told you Oliver that I you choose in England and France and I and and with all of them and saying wow to to be in a situation where you are definitely threat-threatened but you are not in charge of your own security in a way because obviously you trust the security of Britain, still there is an aspect of your Judaism that is not, and feeling that is not clear to them because they're not Jews. And I that you are in a very special situation and ⁓ I feel the power situation here in Israel is more adequate to my feeling. But still, I feel that Israel took a stand here, you know, took the the place of force it entered in a way the identity of the citizens, the Jewish citizens here in Israel, which is strange when you think about. Oliver Spike Joseph: What's the aspect that's entered into the psyche of, just to boil that down a little bit further, what's the aspect that's entered into the psyche the Israeli citizen or the Jewish Israeli? Yair Eldan: psychic Vehi She’amda, La’avotainu Velanu, Sheb’chol Dor VaDor Omdim Aleinu Lechaloteinu every generation we are persecuted. This is of being a total eternal victim, you in turn, know, makes you aggressive, makes you feel that you are in a very dangerous world and all you have to do is is practice power. over this sense of And that's the shape because Oliver Spike Joseph: So, yeah, no, we're always skirting on the edge of ⁓ into a conversation which is specifically political, but this ⁓ important material and then we'll return to our stories in just a moment. there a battle going on in the Middle East and ⁓ not political scientist and at moments I wanna hide the newspaper away and at moments I'm, you know, somebody who reads quite ferociously in the news and listens to actually quite a lot of podcasts on what's going on in the Middle East. But there are forces in the Middle East, both in Israel and in the Arab world, which want to push us apart as people. That's part of the psychology of the victimhood that we will be in eternal war, that there will always be people who hate us. you know, in the broad sense, before October 7th, you could make an argument that Israel was more toward an aspect of its own personal identity and the Jewish community in general of progress pride aspiration ⁓ and part of a know community of nations ⁓ yada yada and then post october 7th I think for both ⁓ let speak for the diaspora experience because you are here in Jerusalem right now but for the diaspora experience I've said this on this podcast before that people who are very, very, very intimately connected to the running of UK society, the political world, the medical world, the research world, know, suddenly feeling somewhat on the outside ⁓ that's loose know, the extreme end feeling persecuted, feeling ostracized, feeling like they don't have a place. And that is ⁓ Part of my experience as a rabbi is just listening to those stories of people feeling like they've been somehow been outed as Jewish or been forced to state their Jewish identity and connection with Jewish community, let alone with the state of Israel. But ultimately, in the context of this conversation, that's a political move. Those are some of the extremist forces. I particularly laid that door at the foot of Iran on some level. and some of the more extremist forces in Israel that seek that aspect of division. And what we're talking about is the fundamental leg of that part, which is about whether we belong in some kind of inclusive global society slash Middle Eastern society, or whether our ultimate aspect is, behodovah do'am dim aleinu. In every generation, they stand up against us. to offer destruction or whether there's a possibility of some kind of you know community of brotherhood you know among the nations it's it's it's a big topic but that's an aspect of what ⁓ Holocaust might might speak to in this year that's it that's an open intellectual question Yair Eldan: mean, the debate over the question whether or not it's moral and justified to use Holocaust in a political conversation these days. I was a child, I remember Yeshayahu Leibowitz saying about the settlers that they Yudo- Nazis. And I remember that people were you know, went crazy and said, why are you desecrating the memory of ⁓ the Shoah, of the who died there and the survivors themselves and using it in a very political way? everybody the Holocaust around me, the left, the right, and my, actually my challenges to ⁓ differentiate and see what's justified to use it and when it's not. And I mean, the answer he gave me is safe. I'm not sure it's the best answer, but is when you use a shoe in order to deepen the mind, in order to reflect, in order to have a critical thinking about it, about reality, I think it's a good thing because the Holocaust is a very important in humanity's life, in humanity's... to all human beings. But when use the Shoah, when you use the Holocaust to close the mind, to be aggressive, to be defensive, I think it's a wrong to use it. And I think it's 20 years now, by the way. to the very famous ⁓ speech that Yair Golan gave 10 years ago, it's 10 years, the Shoah. And ⁓ said he noticed there are processes that were going ⁓ on in in 1930s that can ⁓ see that are doing in Israel's will. And everybody went crazy on and said it's ⁓ wrong to use Shoah. ⁓ But when you think about it, in my test, I think he opens the mind, he opens us, he makes us more sensitive. I think that's the Holocaust. I mean, that's what we can do with such a terrible, you know, historic event. Oliver Spike Joseph: The aspect of petichat lev, like the opening of the heart, the opening of the mind, I think is Listen, it's tremendously complicated because on the streets of London and many European capitals there have been people waving lots of banners which invoke imagery, swastikas, war crimes, cleansing, genocide, name it. It feels, from a Jewish perspective, feels clumsy and that has provoked a lot of fear in our Jewish communities of what the politics of the streets that are somehow also seeping into our political process But I also think in the sense, exactly as you describe, political debate about how we protect. the rights of minority communities, the human rights, rule of law, governance, those of things. Then perhaps ⁓ some of discussions of what Nazi looked like in 1939, well, in the 1930s and beyond is important, but it's ⁓ complicated terrain. I to move us along. Maybe we'll return to this afterwards. I want to move us along to two of the stories that we wanted to present We're both in Warsaw Ghetto. the Warsaw Ghetto was ⁓ at its peak, more than 400,000 Jewish people. It was used by the Nazis to concentrate Jewish populations from in and around Warsaw from the 1940s. and was ultimately dismantled and destroyed in part in 1943 where 300,000 Jews were deported mostly to Treblinka, a death camp. The story of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is that many, many people of those 400,000 died of disease and hunger and cold even before the deportations. and the liquidation of the ghetto began, aspect of resistance and resilience was predominantly present the character Mordechai Anilevich, who was the leader of the Ghetto Uprising. And they fought the know, highly trained, highly militarized, perhaps the foremost fighting force the Nazi regime. in 1943, before the ghetto liquidation, they fought, about 750 people fought the SS battalion. We're not talking about the aspect of resistance and resilience today, but there is something of story that we're talking about which relates to Gvura, resistance, resilience, opposition to Nazi rule. We're talking about Oneg Shabbat. And by way of great Yair, Abraham Levine, you're going to tell a little bit about him in a second, he sat down at the table of Oneg Shabbat. Oneg Shabbat was... a group that met on Saturday, hence the name Oneg Shabbat. Oneg Shabbat means the enjoyment of Shabbat. Normally the script are of people like singing and having rest and ⁓ food on Shabbat as is customary around Israel, the Jewish world, every Shabbat. But this was not actually people sitting around and eating. It was a group of social scientists, politicians, academics, anthropologists who it upon themselves to collect material from the Warsaw Ghetto documenting Jewish life inside Poland pre-war and the life of the ghetto. As we to before, the people who sat around the Oneg Shabbat table, around I think up to 50 different academics who sat around that table on a weekly basis on Saturday, didn't know what was gonna happen to the Warsaw Ghetto ultimately, but they foresaw, in a moment of resistance, the possibility was to collect the stories of the people who lived in the ghetto. Yair, tell us a little bit about Avraham Levine, his place in Oneg Shabbat, Oneg Shabbos and your relationship with him as your great uncle. Yair Eldan: thinking about your Oneg Shabbat and image of them sweating on Friday night just imagine, I mean, that's resistance, bravery when you think about it in a way. It's least as physical bravery, right? I mean, to dwell, mean, to about the miseries that goes on around you. right, and to have an historical point of view about the events to understand that it's very important that you actually document everything that goes on ⁓ you and midst of the I think that's mean Also, I can see the basic human need here to control, to understand, actually exercise humility against the inhuman conditions that you are. ⁓ I it, but I think, Oliver, you think that there is also something very Jewish about it, right? I remember you mentioned the books. You have to remember. in Judaism is a lot around memory, a memory of historical events, of mythical events, and there is something Jewish about this critical thinking and putting on, ⁓ know, the ⁓ platform of events, facts, in order to analyze reality. So my uncle was part of it and I'm so proud that I have this connection to Abraham Levine who was an educator who married the sister of my grandmother, Guta Hotner ⁓ Abraham and had a daughter, Ora, and they actually went Israel and Abraham before 1939. And Abraham searched for a job here in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, but didn't find job as an educator. The in Palestine in those days were very harsh. And he back Warsaw. And when the Jews forced to into the ghetto, he was the head teacher. I think they had a teacher, I think they had a or a teacher in the school named Yahudiya, which was in Hebrew school in Warsaw, just imagine a Hebrew school. And he was fluent in Hebrew, wrote a diary and had it, and it was found after the Holocaust, published. And 15 years ago, they actually found from this diary and the in Yad Vashem went to actually, you know, they didn't know where it came from and then they actually compared the handwriting and understood it's Avraham Levins. And Ola her my great aunt, died from illnesses in the Abraham documented the great deportation, July 1942. He documented it in his diary. And it's actually, ⁓ you can find it online, of it. And he was sent to Treblinka and died there. So, ⁓ and enough, my family talk about Abraham and Gute and Ora. Only when I was in twenties understood that have a very close who ⁓ was part of Oneg And I started searching about And it's interesting we didn't speak the Did you speak in your family about the Holocaust when you grew up? Oliver Spike Joseph: No, it's an interesting story there too. I only grew up with one grandparent, Grandma Kitty. She died when she was 100. But was very, very English. She had fine china in her house. They'd drink tea out of teacups with the saucer. For me, it was normal growing up, but she was on reflection, very, English. And I think... some kind of ⁓ strange symmetry. My sense of my mum's parents, neither of them I ever met, in north of England, so like, you 200 miles away from London or whatever, was they also were quite English. Mum's parents, the family would have come in the late 1800s. My family back 300 years in the UK. But I think the aspect of Shoah was also some kind of shame in a different way to what it was in the state of Israel. ⁓ that maybe, you know, the classical description is kind of those poor European Jews who were murdered, you know, perhaps internally it was very sad, but not something that they necessarily talked about growing up. Truth is I don't know, know, indeed, well, that's my sense of upbringing and the experience of the, the European population. But, you know, ⁓ my generation is now, you know, an 80-year-old man. Yair Eldan: Hmm. Oliver Spike Joseph: some level in his 20s, 30s and 40s would have been surrounded by refugees and to this day we have you know every other one of his friends in our community has some kind of Holocaust story without doubt. The story I wanted to share is ⁓ also from Warsaw ghetto, of Rev Kalonymus Kalman Shapira who was the Warsaw Gheto Rebbe and it's a story about, written by Szymon Huberband and Szymon Huberband was another member of the Oneg Shabbat. Now what's interesting about the story is that my sense of Oneg Shabbat is that it's, know, 30 to 50 people sitting around the table doing something which is illegal. that was certainly banned by the Germans, and bringing together all sorts of people who might otherwise have had conversations. And I think, I need to do a little bit more research, but I think the story of Szymon Huberband, who was from oneg Shabbat, who had seemingly a friendship with the Aish Kodesh Aish Kodesh is known by the name of one of his foremost The Holy Fire, Kalman Shapira I think the relationship that he had with him, partly came about through his reporting to Oneg Shabbat. So there's this amazing story where they go to Mikvah. know, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira is responsible for leading a soup kitchen for up to 1500 people during the dark days of ghetto life. He probably had up to several hundred people sleeping in his library overnight. As the ghetto got fuller fuller fuller, floor space to sleep got more and more limited. He was supporting people to find Mikvah. which is part of marital life that women need to find mikveh each month. the darkness of the ghetto, an actor was also illegal. Much of Jewish practice was illegal in the ghetto. This is the story about his own personal practice, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira So him and Szymon Huberband, two rabbis from the ghetto, but seemingly from different communities, go and find mikveh. And the story starts with them groping in the dark, probably like three or four in the morning. and they cross the ghetto, walk inside of alleys, everything in the pitch black. They arrive at this house, they're greeted by a dark figure who's seemingly expecting them. They like fall through dark corridors in this house right the way down into a basement. The description is them like jumping over some kind of hurdle in the house to get into this mikveh. They have to undress in the dark, both of them. They both dunk. This is a ritual act that they're doing in preparation for the high holidays of 1940. often go to Mikva depending on the community that you come from, lots of men go to Mikva before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Including, also try and go before Yom Kippur each year to Mikva, in the water naked. The water is supposed to purify you. Both Huberband and the Aish Kodesh Kalonymus Kalman Shapira dunk and they come out on the other side. Repeat get dressed come out the other side kind of go through this labyrinth house to get out of the mikvah on the other side and the the last part of the article that Huberband writes that as they came up out of the mikvah and left this building the Sun was just coming up and they read the sign on the outside of door they you know the suggestion is they wouldn't have seen it on the way in because it was pitch black it says opening the mikvah or employing it be punished as sabotaged, as sabotaged, will be subject between 10 years in prison and death. And there's just like this very, I've taught this story a couple of times there over the last week, there's something just very haunting about the aspect of spiritual resistance, of camaraderie and connection between two people, and then coming up at the other side and reading this sign, like somehow being like reawakened to the fact, you know, a normal ritual act. And then as you exit being reawakened to the fact of the illegality and the persecution of your faith and practice and desire to be a Jew. It's a powerful story. Yair Eldan: Listen, when read these stories about this bravery of keeping Yom Kippur and Auschwitz, know, everything Seder (Passover said, there are a few descriptions of people are actually making an effort which is crazy when you cannot pass over and they... Oliver Spike Joseph: on Passover. Yair Eldan: right to make something of their, you know, very extreme situation in a concentration camp. So I read these stories, ⁓ thank ⁓ who doesn't exist. I thank him as we, I ⁓ thank God that I live in Israel, really, because the burden of these stories, the burden in a Jew and a Jew who lives ⁓ enormous when you think about it. I mean, the fact that they, in order to maintain the Jewish identity, easily it also helped them in a way, I understand, but so it's also a state that we don't allow these, the needs to our Jewish identity and continue. I mean, the fact that I live in Israel, it allows me a little bit to reliance from this burden. because I have this, you know, the state, the Jewish state, which gives me, gives me a protection in a way and my Jewish identity. if it was living on the inside, I would actually, maybe I would be, it's crazy, really, because it's so brave when you think about it. Oliver Spike Joseph: So what's really Jewish about Holocaust memorial? Why do we do it to ourselves? There's this great story that we both have come across in different places Kibbutz It's in Chaim short story called Hadrasha, the sermon. and I'll share it for a second, because I love it. Yudke doesn't speak very much of the kibbutz. He stands up at this kibbutz meeting. The image is in like the Hadar Ochel one of the halls of the kibbutz, and they have a kibbutz meeting and he stands up and he says, I want to state that I'm opposed to Jewish history. And then he says, I would simply teach our children, I would forbid teaching our children Jewish history. Why did the devil teach them about our ancestor's shame? I would just say to them, Yudke doesn't speak very much of the kibbutz. He stands up at this kibbutz meeting. The image is in like the Hadar Ochel one of the halls of the kibbutz, and they have a kibbutz meeting and he stands up and he says, I want to state that I'm opposed to Jewish history. And then he says, I would forbid teaching our children Jewish history. Why did the devil teach them about our ancestor's shame? I would just say to them, Yeladim, boys, the day that we were exiled from our land, we've been a people without history. Class dismissed, go and play football. Yeladim, boys, the day that we were exiled from our land, we've been a people without history. Class dismissed, go and play football. It's also kind of haunting in a way because we such stories the Jewish community of exile, of being thrown of Spain, of many of the Middle East, of even before the Second War being thrown out of many parts of Eastern Europe and Russia. by the pogroms, by different attacks on Jewish community that's in any kind of historical order. It's hard. I'm for very young kids in our house and one of our kids is asking why we're lighting candles. How do you even begin to say what you're, what on we're talking about here? Why is that of value? Yair, what's really Jewish about ⁓ any of Like any of this that we've just recorded about about talking Shoah. Yair Eldan: I can understand, I think that the same Hazaz wrote that Drash, I think his description is also connected to reality. There were a lot of people who actually wanted to do, what did, I mean, we're talking about the first years of the state, I think, and the state of Israel. And in order to actually make this youth revert, to build a new state, they found probably they need to disconnect from Jewish history. But obviously, I mean, I understand this element, but you really disconnect yourself from the history of your people. It allows you from within, even ⁓ you, know, your ⁓ willingness it's repressive that ⁓ won't help as we know. So ⁓ if ask me, to memorize that the Holocaust is connected in a way to our critical thinking as Jews about world. So for me, that main mean, just to see the capacity of humans, the way the law, the, you know, steel the earthly. think that's main... ⁓ main idea of ⁓ memory of the Shoah How was it with you, Oliver? Oliver Spike Joseph: No, I think your description sounds good. I think in a religious context. Listen, like to go to therapy and not talk about my, you the passing of my mother and my sister. That would be great. But it would be a totally wasted experience because a lot of who I am is shaped by, you know, two key bereavements in life. I don't want to compare that to the show, but I'll compare that to the Shoah, holocaust Like, it would be nice to go to, you know, family therapy as the Jewish people and not to be... Yair Eldan: Right. Right. Oliver Spike Joseph: talking about Shoah but wouldn't help us because ⁓ a big kind of component part of the last hundred years and the last two thousand years of Jewish history. So, in a religious context, my sense is, again, for better or for worse. our the writings of the Aish Kodesh which is his sefer where he ⁓ during years of the Warsaw Ghetto specifically buried in the Warsaw Ghetto like the material of Oneg Shabbat we didn't mention that the material of Oneg Shabbat was ultimately buried in milk cartons underneath the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto and found afterwards all but one of the cartons was found and is now stored in a place called JHI the Jewish Historical Institute in and also a must visit for people who are tourists in Eastern Europe. part of the Aish Kodesh and ⁓ other Holocaust literature like it is ultimately asking some of the most difficult questions of being a human. How is evil possible? How do we connect that what is to lead Jewish life culturally, religiously and otherwise? And in the tones and in the voice of Aish Kodesh, as he ultimately progresses towards his own murder outside of Warsaw in 1943, is a real questioning, a real profound faith and bravery, but also a real questioning of what it means to be alive and to be alive seeing tremendous depravity around you, murder, starvation, desperation. people going crazy, like you can't the kind of stuff that the Ishkodesh as a leader of the ghetto would have seen on ⁓ daily if not hourly basis during times and still wrote and still preserved and in the example of the Mikva still kept up ⁓ some of spiritual life for himself during that try and wrap up this enormous topic. Tell us a couple of words, ⁓ some kind of central where are you ⁓ and does this leave you this year ⁓ as say goodbye to a week of Yom HaShoah and head towards Yom Ha'Atzmaut and Yom HaZikaron, two other powerful days, days of Israeli independence and days of memorial Where are you with Yom HaShoah? Yair Eldan: Mm-hmm. I think I am in a way torn, not as the past before October 7th. I'm more torn between my feeling that Shoah is ⁓ of the of anti-Semitism, of ⁓ hatred towards Jews. because they're Jews and the universal aspect of Shoah, meaning that every human being, including Jews themselves, can actually deteriorate morally and do that they never thought, never imagined that ⁓ human can do to others. So ⁓ I this sense of... of trying to accommodate these two is me, the year Oliver Spike Joseph: So my last word is, thanks for the conversation. I where I am left ⁓ is are people who has this really significant part of our story. And I definitely grew up as a young person, certainly in my teens and twenties, quite strongly show a memory in the broad sense. I didn't want to talk about Holocaust. I didn't really want to learn about Holocaust. I think I kind of in my youth probably wanted to celebrate Judaism for the good stuff. October 7th definitely changed me but you know I also met my wife in Poland on a Holocaust trip ⁓ see the importance and the value. Yair Eldan: Mmm. Say that again. Oliver Spike Joseph: I met Natalie not in Auschwitz, but in Poland. So it's definitely something which shapes me. think that place of ⁓ is some kind of awareness that is part of our story. And the second part is choice, it's about free will. It is our choice to learn these stories and learn in the greatest plane of spiritual and emotional expansion. Yair Eldan: I like it. Oliver Spike Joseph: what these stories can mean. And a part of that exactly as you describe about considering own humanity, considering how to be the best possible communities that we can be where we are. you know, tov at am Yisrael for the good of the nation, somehow using this material and these and this memory to move in good and productive directions. as they say never again, also just for the aspect of spiritual expansion and growth. Yair, thank you. Thanks to our listeners for listening. This is really Jewish. We are really grateful for your support as we cruise towards our episode in a couple of weeks time. We are welcoming Rabbi Tamar Elad who's joining us for ⁓ Yom Haatzmut Yom Ha'Zikaron our Israeli Independence Day and Israeli Memorial Day episode that will launch early next week a bit of luck, God willing. Thank you to Oi Va voy for our musical outro and intro. Listen to their single Back to My Roots ⁓ streaming platforms. They've got gigs coming up, which we'll try and announce. We've just announced here that we are looking for a content assistant. If you want to help us produce Really Jewish or if you know somebody who might help us. please please send us their details. Give us feedback on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or where you listen to your podcast and send this podcast to friends. We're building Really Jewish from the wheels up and we are grateful for your support including on Patreon where you can make a small monthly donation to support this project. Yair, was great to talk to you. See you next week for more Really Jewish. Yair. Yair Eldan: As usual, see you next week.