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Kisses and Memory

Submitted by Rabbi Menachem Creditor [Berkeley, CA] on Sun, May 18, 2008

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.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor is rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, CA. He is also founder of ShefaNetwork: (The Conservative Movement Dreaming from Within), co-founder of KeshetRabbis (The Alliance of Gay-Friendly Conservative and Masorti Rabbis), and author of TheTisch, an electronic commentary on Jewish Spirituality. He is a popular speaker at synagogues, college campuses, and various communities on questions of Jewish Identity, Leadership, and Spirituality. As one half of Shirav, a Jewish folk-music group, he has spread passion, comfort, and joy to audiences around North America and Israel.