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(7) Never Again? Holocaust Memory After October 7th · Defining Moments

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Welcome to the Defining Moments podcast. I'm Rabbi David Fine.
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On October 7th, Hamas terrorists hunted Jews house to house,
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burned families alive, and committed atrocities that immediately evoked memories
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of the darkest chapter in Jewish history, the Holocaust.
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While the systematic Nazi genocide remains uniquely incomparable in its scope
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and horror, the echoes of that period have haunted our collective consciousness since October 7th.
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Now, as we've just marked Asara B'tevet and the Yom HaKadish HaKhali,
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and approach the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and International
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Holocaust Remembrance Day,
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the weight of these historical parallels feels particularly profound.
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My guest today is Shifra Melina-Waxman, a Holocaust educator and experienced
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guide in Poland, who has dedicated her life to Holocaust education and memory.
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In the wake of October 7th, we find ourselves asking profound questions about
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the meaning of never again in a world where Jews were once again hunted in their homes.
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How do we process the similarities and differences between these events?
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And how might this change the way we teach about and remember the Holocaust?
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These are some of the complex questions we'll explore today with someone who
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brings both scholarly expertise and deeply personal perspective as an Israeli,
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a mother of soldiers, and a guardian of Holocaust memory.
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At this crucial moment in Jewish history, her insights are more relevant than ever.
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Okay, welcome to the Defining Moments podcast. I'm Rabbi David Fine,
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and today I'm very honored to host here Shifra Melina-Waxman.
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So before we get into questions or any interview, Shifri, thanks so much for coming.
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Thanks for being here and taking your time. Why don't you just give us a little
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bit of a bio of who you are before we start?
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Thank you so much for having me. Who am I?
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My first time around the bases as a career, I was an attorney.
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When we made Aliyah, that took a back seat for a while. I did a lot of laundry.
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And then I did a course and I became a guide in Yad Vashem.
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And as I became more and more entrenched in that world, I went back to school
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in Haifa and got my master's in Holocaust studies.
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Then during COVID, things got quiet in the museum. And so I started to teach
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classes. I took a course to be a guide in Poland. And I've been doing all of
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those things for quite a number of years now.
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Why would you move from being a lawyer, especially in Israel?
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Being a lawyer sounds much more lucrative than being a Holocaust educator.
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The truth is, is that it wasn't from nowhere. When I was in college,
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I took quite a number of courses in advanced Yiddish.
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And I was thinking of going for a graduate degree in Yiddish.
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And then when I got into law school, my dad said to me, Shifi,
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you got into law school, you're going to law school.
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And that's where I started. But it was a love which I returned to and which
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I'm happy to say my father was very happy with the switch later on.
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Okay, so we'll talk about your legal career another time. We're really here
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to talk about your Holocaust career and about the Holocaust.
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The timing is very, very important because we just marked Asar Abatevet last
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week on Friday, which Asar Abatevet, for those of you who don't know,
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is also the day that the Rabbanut, the Israeli Rabbinate, Chief Rabbinate,
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in the early days of the state, in the early 50s, established as a day that's
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called Diom HaKadish HaKlali, a day that people, when they don't know the day of death.
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Say Kaddish for their relatives who perished in the Holocaust.
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And pretty soon, we're coming up to January 27th, which is the International
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Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is also the liberation from Auschwitz.
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And it's very, very meaningful this year, especially because it's 80 years.
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It marks 80 years. So the Holocaust is in the air.
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And really what I want to talk about is the Holocaust through the prism of October 7th.
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There's a lot to talk about, and we'll also do it in the reverse direction,
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hopefully if we have time at the end.
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But let's start with a very seemingly simple question.
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As somebody who is a Holocaust educator, right, I know just from our own conversations
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as well as from classes that you teach,
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part of which I attend, that you've been very hesitant to speak about October
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7th, which to me and to others, perhaps is a little strange.
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Meaning right after October 7th, it wasn't long until people started saying
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that today, October 7th is the deadliest day for Jews that have been attacked since the Holocaust.
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Very soon after that, we saw Gilad Erdan, who is the ambassador to the UN from
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Israel, or at least at that point he was, he was wearing, you know,
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a yellow band in the United Nations.
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So the comparison started right away.
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Now, we'll talk in a moment about whether the comparisons are in place,
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but why were you hesitant to really talk about it?
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Well, first of all, I think that's a good characterization. I have been hesitant
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and we've discussed it many times.
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First of all, it feels like an open wound. And there was a while when it was
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just too heavy to link the two.
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We're still living in the midst of history. History is still unfolding around us.
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And it seemed a little bit early to already be drawing conclusions between what's
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happening right now in our newspaper cycle, in our news cycle,
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to things that happened 80 years ago and even further back.
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So that was the first hesitation. The other hesitation is that a bedrock of
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Holocaust education is the unique nature of the Holocaust.
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And oftentimes when Holocaust imagery and Holocaust symbols are being applied
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to other circumstances, we view it as dilution. We view it as a misuse of the
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Holocaust and its memory, and it feels uncomfortable.
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Nonetheless, with time, I think that I've come around a little bit,
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and I feel more comfortable to talk about it. That's our conversation today.
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I feel more comfortable, and I've reviewed my thoughts the following way.
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First of all, I've thought a lot about the Vahisha Amda that we say on Pesach.
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And in that sense, the notion of putting Jewish tragedy within the context of
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overall Jewish history is a very natural thing to do.
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And so to the extent that we want to look at October 7th and look at it within
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the overall scope of throughout history, the terrible things have befallen the Jewish people.
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That's not something which is antithetical to the way that we look at our history as Jews.
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And then the other piece of it is that I heard Javi Dreyfus address the fact
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that comparing and contrasting is something that historians do all the time.
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And so the fact that we are drawing areas where October 7th and the Shoah have
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certain commonalities and in many ways trigger us to think of one or the other,
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that's a very natural thing.
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It doesn't mean that they're similar on all realms.
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The Holocaust was part of World War II. There are many, many differences,
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far more differences than similarities between the two events.
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And yet there are things which those of us who went through,
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and as you just said, just immediately after the event, the Holocaust comparisons
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and the feelings of remembering the Holocaust immediately came up to the fore
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and were being discussed everywhere.
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So just for those who may not know, Javi Dreyfus is? She's a professor at Tel
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Aviv University, a very preeminent professor of the Holocaust.
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Now, you said a few moments ago that a bedrock of Holocaust education is the
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uniqueness of the Holocaust and really an inability to compare it to any anything
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else, any other tragedy in Jewish history.
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So or not in Jewish history, any other genocides that may happen to other in other times in history.
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OK, thank you. Thank you for that clarification. But when you say the bedrock,
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does everyone agree with that?
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I think that it's within the world of scholars and historians.
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I think that it's understood that other things can be compared, as I just said.
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In other words, we're always involved in these comparisons. We compare the experiences
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of Western European Jews in the Holocaust and Eastern European Jews in the Holocaust.
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We compare what happened in genocides in Darfur and what happened in the Holocaust.
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We compare, but that's not the same as equalize. And when we speak about the Shoah,
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I think that we do try to hold on to the fact that what the Nazis did to the
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Jews during the Shoah is unique in history and remains that way.
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So just to summarize or conclude, if I understand correctly,
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you therefore would be, again, somebody like Erdan wearing a yellow band or
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people wearing uniforms from a concentration camp.
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I recoiled when I saw that image. I distinguish Gilad Erdan from those who were
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survivors and those who were down in the Gaza envelope.
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In other words, if you were down there, like anyone who has suffered on your
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basar, on yourself, I give you full range to express that however you find meaning to do so.
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I think that its use by politicians is not so wise.
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I again recoil when people refer to Hamas Nikim as Nazim.
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The Nazim were plenty bad and then the Hamas Nikim are plenty bad.
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There's no need, I think to name one, the other, they can each stand in their own pantheon of evil.
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Okay. We'll talk, we'll get back to this topic. I want to talk about something else for a moment.
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You're very entrenched, like we said at the beginning in Holocaust education.
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So I want to talk a little bit about Holocaust education, especially as it happens here in Israel.
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So we know that there is a very famous statement sent by Santayana, right?
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He said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
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And we've spent decades teaching about the Holocaust in classrooms,
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in concentration camps.
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We've heard for decades, never again. And yet on October 7th,
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Jews were hunted from house to house while the entire world watched.
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So this forces us to ask, really, what are the goals of Holocaust education?
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And if the goal is, the main goal is preventing these things from repeating
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itself, then clearly something isn't working.
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So what are the goals of Holocaust education and what needs to change in order
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to make never again, not just a slogan?
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Okay, so it's really a two-part question. I'll answer it in two parts.
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The first has to do with a general, and I would say it's almost a philosophical
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question of what's the point of or what are our goals with Holocaust education?
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And again, this is something we've discussed in the past, that when one teaches
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the Holocaust, there's this tension between wanting not to over-editorialize
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or to force the events of the Holocaust to fit a certain message.
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We often joke about the Parshat HaShavua that can be melded to fit any kind of message.
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And so I think it's important. And a lot of times Holocaust education is cherry
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picked and they'll take certain events and it'll be meant to teach a lesson
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of the importance of democracy, of the importance of Zionism,
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of a whole range of different lessons can be squeezed out of the Holocaust.
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And what happens is, is that this editorialization sometimes feels a little
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bit unfair or not fully in line with the historical facts.
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And it's something which, again, which I try to shy away from.
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And at the same time, you can't just in Holocaust education, throw a load of facts.
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You do have to somehow string them together to make a cogent sort of lesson.
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It's somewhere between being totally agnostic and just throwing a Wikipedia
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of these are the things that happen.
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And on the other hand, not forcing them into a certain lesson that seems to
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limit the truth of what actually happened.
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That's a tension that's always happening in Holocaust education.
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Holocaust education. Sorry, did you want to say something? No,
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maybe you're going to answer what I wanted to ask in the second part of the question.
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Okay, no. So that issue is what is the point of Holocaust education?
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I think it's meant to be many things. It's meant to teach all of those things,
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the importance of treating everybody fairly, the importance of being aware to
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the threats posed by anti-Semitism, the importance. I'm a Zionist.
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It's the importance of the safety of the state of Israel. It's the importance
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to intervene as the Hasideu Motolam, as the righteous Gentiles did when people
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outside your group are suffering.
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There are many, many lessons that are there.
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As far as why it hasn't been successful in preventing what happened in October
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7th, and I'd say even more so, there was this terrible insult that it was flipped on us.
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In other words, not only were the lessons of the Holocaust not heeded to in
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protecting Jewish people, but very quickly you saw the slogans and the.
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Verbiage and the images of the Holocaust being flipped on their heads and the
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Jews were being called Nazis.
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And in that sense, it was this terrible injustice. How did that happen?
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The best that I can say is that anti-Semitism goes back to Esav Sonet Yaakov,
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that there is a scourge of anti-Semitism, which is going to exist.
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And perhaps that's just the way of the world. I think that we have to recognize
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that if someone has an irrational hatred of the Jewish people,
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that it's not going to be cured, if you will, by education.
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And that was the case in Germany. And that is the case in certain extreme Islamist
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anti-Semitic doctrines.
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And it's a It's a hatred which is illogical and is beyond education.
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Thank you. But in the beginning of the second part of your answer with that list of all the things.
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That we want to accomplish in Holocaust education, it's interesting to me that
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making sure it doesn't happen again was not on that list, which leads me to
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a second part of the question, which is,
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okay, let's say that I want to make sure that it doesn't ever happen again.
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What is the average person in the street?
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What is David Fine going able to do in order to make sure that the Holocaust
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or some tragedy like this never happens again?
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And in all reality, the whole list that you gave is the regular person,
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average person in the street able to prevent the scourge of antisemitism.
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What can the average person do? And at the end of the day, what are we really,
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really trying to accomplish in terms of an action item?
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Okay. We could say that it's in order to recognize antisemitism,
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but that's not an action item.
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What can we do with Holocaust education that will really make the world a better
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place? Or maybe there isn't anything.
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Well, to a certain extent, your questions are above my pay grade. But having said that,
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I think that there has been a trend over the last couple decades where Holocaust
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education has become reduced to certain slogans and has become somewhat detached
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from the original anti-Semitism.
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In other words, discussing anti-Semitism hasn't always been the foremost center
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of discussing what happened to the Jews.
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And rather, it becomes reduced to certain ideas of being nice to everyone,
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etc. I think that perhaps a real in-depth discussion of anti-Semitism could be helpful.
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In other words, understanding what irrational hatred of Jews is,
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what it means to have a different standard for the state of Israel than any
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other country in the world, what that is and what that means and what that looks like.
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Whether I have an action item for you and I for tomorrow, I'm not sure.
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But I think that keeping an understanding that the Holocaust wasn't only about
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social psychology and pressure of groups.
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It was all about at its core hatred of Jews.
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When you talk about having a conversation about a serious conversation about
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anti-Semitism, I'm not sure who you mean should have that conversation.
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Should it be amongst ourselves, the Jewish people about what we could do to
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prevent it? Or perhaps more importantly, amongst the other nations of the world
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that many of them have helped to, you know, bring it about even further.
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You know, I don't know. I, I, I tend to think micro in my life.
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And so I don't, I think that it's certainly, it's an, it's an important conversation
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for us to have amongst ourselves so that we're aware of the threats,
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which we face very often.
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The biggest damage is done to us when we're lulled into a sense of complacency.
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And to a certain extent, that's what happened with Gaza as well.
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There was a sense of complacency and accepting a quiet.
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And I think that talking about the risks of the extreme ideologies faced by
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certain Islamist groups is an important part of that.
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And I think talking about anti-Semitism amongst ourselves and recognizing its danger is important.
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I would hope that other groups around the world outside of our own echo chamber
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will also take these conversations seriously and understand why they continue
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to be so relevant. But as you've pointed out many times.
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October 7th almost caused the opposite from happening, right?
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It seems to have caused more anti-Semitism, right? We're now the new Nazis.
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The Israelis are the new Nazis. So in many ways, it's just causing the opposite.
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Right. I think that when we were all somewhat taken aback by how quickly the
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anti-Semitism erupted on October 8th.
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Dara Horn says people like dead Jews. And so you would have thought that at
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the end of October 7th, we would have been very, very popular people.
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And yet it took just a blink of an eye for all of this anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
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to erupt all over the world.
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And I think that it's evidence of the fact that it was always there.
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It was latent, it was existent there, and someone just had to sort of press
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a button and it all came out.
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And frankly, if we're going to talk about Holocaust history,
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the same could be said in Germany as well.
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The Weimar Republic was a time when the Jews felt very comfortable in Germany.
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And I think many of them were surprised at the speed with which things erupted into the fore.
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So you just used the word complacency, and I was going to make reference to
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what you just said about Jews perhaps feeling very complacent in Germany just prior to the Holocaust.
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So I'm wondering if we could get into the area, and many find this a sensitive
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area, that perhaps the same thing is going on around the world,
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but especially in the United States today, right?
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Jews have reached the top of society.
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They're captains of industry. They're lawyers. They're doctors.
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And in many ways, you and I both grew up in America.
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We thought that Jews had made it in America. But now we're seeing the antisemitism
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has really cropped up, especially on the college campuses since October 7th,
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but certainly in many other places as well.
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So can a lesson or maybe even an action item, like I said before,
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of the Holocaust us, B, that we have to be a little bit more on guard against
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what's happening in every country, but today, certainly in the United States.
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And I'm not necessarily saying that that means that everyone should make Ali out tomorrow.
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That's a different discussion. Forget about what people should do about it.
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I'm just talking about recognizing that it's there and recognizing that something needs to be done.
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Yeah. I mean, again, October 7th was violence directed towards us in Israel.
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And so it's not clear where we're ever going to be immune from anti-Semitic violence.
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And again, and I would consider the violence on October 7th in the South to
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be anti-Semitic violence.
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And anti-Semitism is everywhere. You know, it's easy, whether it's in Teaneck
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or it's in Kfar Aza, or if it's in Paris, it's there.
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And frankly, oftentimes that's very depressing. I'm not sure exactly what can
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be done as an action item, but I'll leave it to the rabbis in the room.
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Well, it's not necessarily the rabbis. It's the heads of many of these major
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Holocaust or anti-Semitism bodies like the ADL, right?
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The Anti-Defamation League, the head of the ADL basically spoke a few days ago,
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maybe it was last week, and more or less said that everything that this industry
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of being against antisemitism has done has basically been a failure.
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So, so much money has been spent on that industry, so to speak.
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So it really makes you wonder what can, if anything, can be done about antisemitism.
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You talked about living in a micro world. So maybe in a micro world,
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it could be worked on and maybe people can succeed.
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Talking about on a macro level, the entire world seems to be a very,
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very, very big challenge.
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You said before that the Holocaust is unique and that's a bedrock of Holocaust education.
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And we said we were going to get back to that.
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Now, while that is true, it's essentially incomparable, right?
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You've also noted how many aspects of October 7th have been deeply triggering.
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You've used that word triggering, and I think it's an excellent word,
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and not necessarily just for Holocaust survivors who've spoken about the sounds
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of terrorists going from door
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to door or the separation of families or the smoke from burning homes,
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but even those people who didn't experience the Holocaust directly because this
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has been so embedded in our psyche that when these things happen,
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it triggers certain things.
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Even if we or the people that are experiencing them were not directly affected by the Holocaust.
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So can you help us understand these echoes, these triggers, so to speak,
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and why they resonate so powerfully across all generations, but especially for us now?
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I think that some of it has to do with an important lesson which Rabbi Sachs
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taught us, which is that for Jewish people, history is memory.
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And he spoke about the fact that there is no biblical Hebrew word for history.
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There's a word, zakhor, which is memory.
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And that the distinction between the two is that it's not a dispassionate study
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from afar, but rather when the Jews learn about what happened to their people
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in the past, it's something which they absorb into themselves.
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And the entire spiral of Jewish history is kind of embedded within all of us
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and that we experience it as ourselves, just like at the Pesach Seder,
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just as if we went out of Mitzrayim.
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And I think that many of us, whether we're the children of survivors or we're
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just people who've been part of the Jewish educational world,
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really feel the Holocaust in a very visceral way as part of our personal history.
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And so when we say that we're triggered, it's not a falsehood and it's not an exaggeration.
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It's literally the fact that when we hear stories of children hiding in closets in a mamad in 2023,
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that it immediately evokes images of children hiding as Nazis rampaged through
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Stetlach trying to find Jews in a roundup.
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That's something which is an immediate association between the two.
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And again, these were things which were coming up immediately.
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So can you give us some other examples besides Nazis searching for children
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in closets? There were the images, first of all, the images of the sexual violence,
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of the NOVA participants racing through the streets.
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There are some very famous images of Jewish women running after their clothes
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had been ripped off of them in Lvov in 1941.
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And those images of racing from immediate sexual violence or the threat thereof,
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those were things which were very, very triggering.
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This idea, again, of children, there are reports from down south of children
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who knew to be quiet when the Hamas Nikim were marauding through the homes.
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And Rav Lau has discussed the poignancy of Jewish children during the Shoah,
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knowing instinctively that they could not cry out and that they had to be silent,
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and sort of maturity and an understanding.
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So those are some important connections. The whole notion of Jews being hunted
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in their homes as opposed to conflicts occurring between two different sets
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of soldiers really brings us back.
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To the Shoah. And again, I'm not sure if this is something you want to go to,
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but there are also elements of the resistance and ways in which we responded
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to this tragedy, which were also evocative of the period of the Shoah.
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When we heard stories about Elchanan Kalmansan, who went from door to door to
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save people out of their mamads in Be'eri,
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and that the people inside were skeptical as to whether it was really someone
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to save them who was on the other side and that he repeated the shema as a password
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to that they would understand that it was safe to open the door.
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Again, these are stories which are almost copy-paste out of the Shoah.
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The notion of the shema being a password is very much in the Shoah.
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And again, and then there are certain images, the images of piles of shoes from Nova victims.
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I mean, I don't have to say much. I think anyone who is familiar at all with
24:44
Holocaust remembrance knows how prominent shoes are in terms of all the shoes
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which were collected in Majdanek and appear in all sorts of museums as representative
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of the masses of the lost.
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So again, you're saying that there's the uniqueness of the Holocaust,
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but obviously there are many differences, many similarities rather,
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in terms of how things were carried out.
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I want to go back to this idea of the uniqueness of the Holocaust.
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I know we've touched upon it several times, but I still have a problem understanding it.
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And sometimes I think it's just a Talmudic debate.
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And what I mean by that is what's so bad if we say that this is similar to the
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Holocaust, meaning what will take away something from the Holocaust?
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We all know maybe it's not historically accurate, but beyond historical accuracy,
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what would be so bad about comparing something to the Holocaust?
25:37
Well, first of all, I think there's something essential about historical accuracy.
25:43
And I think that historical accuracy is not just a Talmudic,
25:47
esoteric kind of debate for people in universities to debate.
25:51
I think that we're on an assault on the truth everywhere, even more so.
25:55
And with each passing decade, as we get further from the historical event and
25:59
his Holocaust denial is more and more pernicious, I think the notion of sticking
26:04
to historical accuracy is is right.
26:06
So you've taught me my lesson. I agree. I can't believe I can't believe I even said into that.
26:12
I can't say I even I disagree. Obviously, I'm a historian in many ways myself.
26:17
And so therefore, you're 100 percent. I take that back.
26:20
But let me try a different way. Meaning the Hamas terrorists that,
26:24
you know, murder, brutally murdered somebody in Kfar Aza, right?
26:29
And the Nazi who shot somebody in Ponar Forest outside of Vilna,
26:34
they were both thinking the same exact thing.
26:38
The, maybe not the same exact thing, but the amount of hatred and the amount
26:42
of anti-Semitism in my mind was identical. So at the end of the day,
26:46
why can't you make comparisons?
26:47
Okay. you're right about historical accuracy, but will it really do all that
26:52
much damage to make a comparison like that?
26:54
Well, one of the questions is, what are you gaining from the comparison? In other words,
26:58
the fact that what happened down south and the violence and the hatred is reminiscent
27:05
and perhaps even equal to some of the hatred that existed during the Shoah.
27:10
Okay, so maybe certain aspects of it were very similar. The events still are
27:15
more dissimilar then they are similar.
27:17
You want to say that the hatred now is equivalent to the hatred then?
27:21
I don't know. In other words, I don't have a thermometer for hatred.
27:24
And even if we say that the hatred now is more than the hatred then,
27:28
let's just take that as ma, you know, so then I'm not sure what we really accomplished.
27:33
We're suffering now. The Jewish people suffered in October and it will take
27:37
us a very, very long time to recover from what happened if we ever recover fully.
27:43
And I think that at a certain point, it's important to analyze each event on its own legs. Yeah.
27:50
Right. Okay. We said that we would turn to this later. You've,
27:53
we've spoken a lot about the Holocaust.
27:56
I'm sorry, October 7th through the prism of the Holocaust. Now I want to speak
28:00
about it in the opposite direction.
28:02
So in 40 years, right? Cause you spoke about the fact that it's right in the
28:06
middle of the event and it's hard to really analyze.
28:09
You spoke about that at the beginning and it's certainly true.
28:11
It's hard to write history or to decide how to educate while the event is still happening.
28:16
But in 40 years, when Israeli children are learning in school about the Holocaust,
28:24
will they have to take October 7th into account?
28:27
What will change about Holocaust history because of October 7th?
28:32
I don't know. I don't know that October 7th will be part of the train of Holocaust
28:37
history, or perhaps it'll be
28:39
more in the course of Israeli history and the changes which happened then.
28:43
And again, and as we've said, we still don't know the end of this event.
28:46
And so that will also indicate how it's taught in the classroom.
28:50
I think that the events of October 7th are very important even today in terms
28:55
of how we study the Holocaust, because I think it helps us re-appreciate certain
29:00
aspects of the Holocaust.
29:01
In other words, we all talk about the fact that the numbers of the Holocaust
29:05
are incomprehensible and they're all sorts of from paperclips which are collected,
29:09
all different methods that educators try to put into action to help people understand
29:15
the enormity of the Shoah.
29:17
For me, I felt the enormity of the Shoah on October 8th, 9th,
29:21
10th, as the numbers of that massacre were coming out.
29:25
And I was watching on my iPhone, the numbers rise from 350, 400, 450.
29:31
And then at a certain point, I'm not very good with numbers,
29:34
but I do know one number from the Shoah, and that is Babi Yar.
29:38
And in Babi Yar, in two days, 33,771 people were murdered.
29:44
And when I thought about what I was going through and the sorrow and the feeling
29:49
of trauma from what we were going through,
29:52
and then I thought about those much larger numbers, I just didn't know how to
29:57
go back and really understand those numbers.
30:00
And so, again, Halila, that I'm trying to minimize the numbers of what we're going through now.
30:04
But I think that going through what we've gone through in the last year and
30:09
a half, I think we can now revisit the Holocaust and start to,
30:13
again, peel away and understand its enormity.
30:15
So I want to push you a little bit more. You said Halila, but I want to push you.
30:19
I know that you don't think this, but I'm going to suggest it anyway.
30:22
It could sound from what you're saying that perhaps we should not feel as bad
30:27
for, you know, 1,200 people that got killed on October 7th as we do for the
30:32
33,000 and some odd in Bobby Yar.
30:35
Meaning, again, what's the, okay, I understand the historical accuracy,
30:39
but what, in terms of our emotions, in terms of our feelings,
30:42
right, you were talking about looking at your phone on October 7th.
30:45
On October 7th, while you were looking at your phone, I doubt very much that
30:48
you were thinking about historical accuracy, right? So what are you saying?
30:54
I'm saying that I was flipping back and forth.
31:00
In other words, my mind, because I'm someone who thinks about the Shoah often
31:03
and reads about it often, and I'm always steeped in these different facts,
31:09
it was hard for me to process what was going on around me without also thinking
31:14
about the Holocaust as well.
31:16
I don't know as much about the Helmnitsky massacres. I don't know as much about
31:20
the Spanish Inquisition.
31:21
And I would venture to say that if we took out, I once did this, actually,
31:25
if you took out certain eduyotes, certain testimonies and writings from those
31:30
various historical events, many of them would map very clearly the Kishinev
31:34
pogrom with what happened down south.
31:36
But my well of knowledge, which I was drawing on, my memories,
31:42
which I were drawing on in the broadest sense, were Holocaust memories.
31:46
And so when I was processing October 7th, I was thinking about the Shoah.
31:50
And when I look back at the Shoah now, I feel even smaller in my understanding.
31:57
I feel more humble in my lack of understanding of the enormity of the Shoah
32:01
because of the enormity.
32:04
And, of course, it goes without saying, and I know that you agree with me on
32:06
this, that each person is olamum lo'o. In other words, you can't compare numbers.
32:11
If you lost one person, it doesn't matter if they were one in 33,000 or one
32:15
in 200. It doesn't matter what the number.
32:18
It's your one, and your whole world has been shattered.
32:22
And I think that that's how we as Jews also process each loss one by one.
32:27
But again, having lived through the trauma of October 7th, I looked back at
32:31
the Shoah and I felt even more ill-equipped to understand the enormity of it.
32:36
There's one huge difference between the Shoah and October 7th,
32:40
which we haven't said yet, but is always lurking behind the scenes.
32:43
And that is, we now live in the modern state of Israel, which obviously did
32:47
not exist in the times of the Shoah.
32:49
We have an army, both of us are parents of soldiers, right? Obviously,
32:53
that's a major difference. So what do you think about that?
32:56
I think that it's the ultimate difference. And here I'm speaking as myself,
33:01
not as a Holocaust educator.
33:03
There are obviously, there's the official position that, you know,
33:07
different Holocaust educators can take.
33:09
But for me personally, the notion that now we're able to defend ourselves is not lost on me.
33:15
The truth is that I felt it even before October 7th. If you ask my kids,
33:19
I've done a terrible thing to them, but I've burdened them with very,
33:21
very long names on their two Datsuhuts.
33:23
And my son, Avi, is burdened with the name Avram Abba Malina Waxman on his two
33:29
Datsuhuts because my grandfather, who was the sole survivor of his family, was Avram Abba Malina.
33:34
And when I saw his Choger and it had that full thing,
33:37
Avram Abba Malina Waxman, it was tremendously meaningful to me that the namesake
33:42
for my grandfather, if only he could know that his name was going out to defend
33:47
the Jewish people, I think that it would have been simultaneously unbelievable and incredible.
33:52
But I like to think it would also bring him great pride.
33:55
Yeah, I think we all have moments like that, only in Israel moments, that's very moving.
34:00
I think there are many people who feel like if only this person who died in
34:03
the Holocaust, if only this person who's no longer living, but a dream of the
34:09
state of Israel was dreamt that they would just feel on a very, very big high.
34:14
But here I want to push you as well, because we know that one of the strongest
34:18
arguments for the creation of the state of Israel was a place for Jews to be
34:23
safe, a place for Jews to be defended.
34:25
And yes, we do have a strong army. And yes, we've made it. We've done more than
34:29
make it. We've always succeeded despite the ups and downs.
34:33
But one could claim that the state of Israel is perhaps the most dangerous place for Jews today.
34:38
So what are we doing wrong?
34:40
Look, the state of Israel failed on October 7th. I don't think that that's an
34:44
overly political thing to say. I think that that's a statement of fact.
34:47
I think that what we saw in the wake of October 7th, though,
34:50
Again, if we want to talk about comparisons to the Shoah, the grassroots assumption of responsibility,
34:58
the grassroots help from one group to another, these were things which happened.
35:03
We talk about informal leadership, which was taking the reins during the Shoah.
35:08
People who previously were not communal leaders, but who found the strength
35:12
to then lead people to safety. We can think about the Bielskis and others,
35:16
people who weren't the great leaders beforehand, but who found their moment
35:19
to save and care for other Jews.
35:21
I think we saw the same thing happen immediately after October 7th,
35:25
a tremendous feeling of solidarity.
35:27
Halavai, if only that sort of sense of solidarity were to continue again.
35:33
And just as there was complacency, we talked earlier, we used that word abroad.
35:38
I think there was complacency within the establishment here.
35:41
And hopefully the state of Israel is, I think it's clear.
35:44
You look, the Middle East is, and this out here, I'm really beyond my bailiwick,
35:48
but the Middle East has been reordered and hopefully we will never be caught
35:54
flat-footed again. I'm into that.
35:56
I want to tell you two experiences that I had about this overall topic and just
36:02
get your feelings about them.
36:04
So one of them was I was at Nova.
36:08
I bring a lot of groups down south, and I was at Nova.
36:11
And one of the people that was with me, a pretty influential person.
36:15
Said, this is the new Auschwitz, right?
36:18
And additionally, I had another experience, which was similar, that Iris Chaim,
36:23
the mother of a hostage that unfortunately got killed by our own forces,
36:28
she spoke in our shul last week, and
36:30
she was saying that, and I think very correctly so, that he was a hero.
36:34
Why was he a hero? Because he escaped. He was able to escape the Hamas terrorists.
36:39
And no matter whether he got killed at the end, obviously, that's a big difference.
36:42
But despite the fact that he got killed, that means that he is a hero,
36:47
which I agree with 100 percent.
36:49
And I don't think anyone would disagree with. But when she spoke about him,
36:52
she said, oh, I see him as a partisan.
36:54
Right. So this idea that Nova was the new Auschwitz, he was a partisan.
36:59
So despite the fact that it should be incomparable, people are using these symbols
37:05
or using these ideas or using these words. So is there something we should be
37:10
doing about that in order to maintain the uniqueness of the Holocaust?
37:14
Or should we just, you know, let it go? Obviously, with Iris Chayim,
37:17
you have to let it go. But Iris Chayim can say whatever she would like.
37:20
But and I'm certainly not going to be a language police or a thought police.
37:24
And I think that to the extent that people speak in certain ways,
37:28
you know, everyone has to speak in a way that suits them and expresses themselves.
37:31
Right. And God forbid I'm not criticizing anybody, not for saying anything.
37:35
Anyone could say whatever they want. And like you said, she could certainly say whatever she wants.
37:39
But I'm talking about in the way that people think, right? She thought of him as a partisan.
37:44
And a partisan is from the Holocaust. And yet we have soldiers, right?
37:49
We have an army. And so it just seemed interesting to me.
37:52
Right. Well, I think that actually the comparison to a partisan is very,
37:56
very apt in terms of somebody who's not part of, officially part of the army,
38:00
but who is taking on an active role for survival,
38:04
for revenge or whatever it is. Again, I think that's.
38:09
I think that perhaps she was touching on something which is much broader and
38:12
which is a lesson that we learned in decades after the Shoah,
38:14
the immediate period right after the Shoah, the notion of heroism was defined very narrowly.
38:20
And it was defined to include primarily the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and other
38:25
moments when people did not, quote unquote, with that terrible maligning,
38:29
going like sheep to the slaughter.
38:30
And in later decades, there was a more Jewish-centered telling of history,
38:34
which broadened the understanding of heroism to include religious heroism and
38:38
cultural heroism and the heroism of just staying alive and the heroism of a
38:42
mother keeping their child safe, et cetera, that much broader understanding.
38:46
And I think that that perhaps is one of the best things that we can take from
38:50
our studies of the Holocaust.
38:52
And that would be to understand the notion of heroism broadly.
38:56
My son-in-law, I'm proud that he served in Gaza.
38:59
And I'm also very proud of my daughter for the way that she held up the house at home.
39:03
And I think that they're both heroes. And so I think the notion of spreading
39:06
the notion, the understanding heroism in all of its multifaceted ways,
39:11
that's something that we learned in the later historiography of the Shah.
39:15
And I think that that's something that we can adopt today.
39:18
So just give us an example. You mentioned cultural heroism, spiritual heroism,
39:21
religious heroism. I'm not sure that everyone really understands what that is.
39:25
So can you do religious heroism? Can you just give us one example?
39:28
Okay. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, there were those who were not appropriate
39:33
fighters, but they stayed in their bunker, Rav Meisel's among them, and held a Pesach Seder.
39:39
What does it mean to hold on to Jewish tradition in the face of bombs exploding
39:44
outside, to hold on to our traditions when it seems that it would be worthless
39:48
or that there is no future?
39:50
What's the point in still holding on to that? That would be a good example of religious resistance.
39:55
I'll note that we had in real time reports of that sort of resistance happening
40:01
by Alex Zanzig in the tunnels of Gaza, that he was sharing lessons on Jewish
40:07
history with other hostages,
40:10
a hostage who was released reported on his ability to do that.
40:13
And I think that that's copy paste again, straight out of the Shoah,
40:16
the notion that you could be sitting underground in a Hamas tunnel and still
40:21
hold on to your wits, then still see the purpose in engaging in the study of history.
40:27
I think that that's a heroism, which is just beyond comprehension.
40:30
It's amazing. It is incomprehensible.
40:33
I just want to tell you one more experience that I had, and then we'll conclude.
40:37
I am a member of the RCA, the Rabbinical Council of America.
40:41
I live in Israel, but when I was in America, I was a member.
40:44
And there are several hundred members of the RCA here in Israel who,
40:47
you know, rabbis who made Aliyah.
40:49
And at the beginning of the war in November at some point, a bunch of missions started coming, right?
40:54
And so there were a bunch of rabbis from the RCA. They came.
40:57
They had six different missions. and because of my cooperation in a number of
41:01
ways between my organization, Barkai, and the RCA, I went on every single one of the missions.
41:06
So in the first mission, we're sitting sort of at the beginning,
41:10
getting to know each other and being told what we're going to do.
41:14
And a rabbi, a young rabbi from America speaks up. He says, it's amazing to me here.
41:19
I thought, and I think we all thought in America that everyone was cowering
41:22
down and was afraid, wasn't going out of their homes.
41:26
And yet when I came to Israel, I see that people feel a great pride.
41:31
People feel like things are really happening, that inspirational things are
41:36
happening, even amidst the tragedy.
41:38
We're not ignoring the tragedy, but there are a lot of wonderful things happening
41:43
because of the war for Israeli society.
41:45
Now, it would seem to me, you're the expert, not me, but it would seem to me
41:50
that this is a major difference between October 7th and the Holocaust.
41:54
Yes, there were efforts to save people and there more efforts to maintain Jewish life.
41:58
But what we've seen in Israel today, I think has just been nothing short of unbelievable.
42:04
And as that rabbi said, in many ways, at least at the beginning,
42:08
it was largely unknown to people outside of the state of Israel.
42:11
Yeah, I think that perhaps if, can I, I think that, I'll just say one more thing.
42:16
I'll say that perhaps one of the best lessons that we can draw from the Shoah
42:22
is the extent to which Jews after the Shoah, survivors after the Shoah,
42:27
despite all odds, were able to rebuild their lives.
42:31
And I think that the resilience which you're pointing to, which this RCA rabbi
42:34
noted, I think that resilience is something which is very much related to the
42:39
resilience of the survivors afterwards.
42:41
And in that sense, it, I think can fill us all with, with hope and pride with
42:47
Tikvah that Bezrat Hashem, we will be able to rebuild.
42:51
The resilience that you're mentioning now in many ways, I'm thinking is very
42:55
similar to the heroism that you were talking about. Absolutely.
42:58
In other words, there's resilience within the war context and eventually Bezrat
43:03
Hashem, when the war ends and we have to rebuild completely afterwards,
43:06
it's happening kind of as in process as this is going on, there's rebuilding
43:10
and war happening simultaneously.
43:12
I think that's some of what this rabbi was noting.
43:16
But eventually, when we can declare this event to have been over,
43:20
I think that we will still have to pick up many pieces.
43:23
And I think that the models of so many people after the Shoah who went on to
43:28
accomplish great things afterwards can really be role models for us and inspiration for us.
43:32
I mean, I think that that's a very good place to end. But if you have any last thoughts.
43:38
That's great. Okay. Well, I think we learned a lot about, and we spoke a lot
43:42
about both the uniqueness of the Holocaust, but also some of the similarities,
43:46
but more importantly, what we can learn from each thing.
43:49
And hopefully, like I said before, in terms of action items,
43:52
I don't, I'm not sure both of us said, we're not sure what the action items
43:55
are, but hopefully we could use each event in order to make this world a better place. Amen.
44:02
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44:29
Music.