Yom HaShoah VeHagevurah 5768: "Kisses and Memory"
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
There are days in which the simplest things carry incalculable meaning. Today is one such day.
Yom HaShoah VeHagevurah, our Day of Holocaust and Heroism, amplifies every experience of life to a heightened place. A smile, an embrace, a bright butterfly. Each evokes, for those attuned to the holy moment, devastating heartbreak and deep hope.
Today, just this morning, I sang with a group of young Jewish children. We kissed the Torah and wished it a Boker Tov, a Good Morning. And I was transported immediately back to Poland, back to the nightmares. The camps. A museum with Torah Scrolls made into musical instruments by the Nazis who forced Jews to play while their sisters, brothers, parents, and children were marching, working. Dying. Where kisses weren't. Where Torah wasn't. A world without song.
But today young Jewish children sang with delight and blew the Torah a kiss.
And we remember.
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Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Joined: September 20, 2007
A prolific writer, musician, and teacher, Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, CA. Rabbi Creditor currently serves on the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Board of Trustees of the UC Berkeley Hillel, and on the Rabbinic Advisory Committee of Shalom Bayit. Rabbi Creditor’s writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Forward, The Jewish Week, J. Weekly, The Jewish Advocate, The Boston Globe, Kolot: Voices of CJ, JewsbyChoice.org, Conservative Judaism, and in several Jewish anthologies, including the recently published Paths of Torah. His latest CD "Within" (EKS 2011) and book "A Pesach Rhyme" (Lulu 2012) have already reached Jewish communities around the world. He blogs at rabbicreditor.blogspot.com.
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