Shoah

This Sunday the Jewish world commemorates the Shoah, or Holocaust - the systematic extermination of six-million Jews. The Torah portion for this week, Shemini, tells the following related story of unspeakable death. "Now Aaron's sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his fire pan and laid incense upon it, offering to God an offering not demanded of them. And fire came forth and consumed them, and they died. Then Moses said to Aaron: "This is what God meant by the words: Through those near to me I show Myself holy and assert my authority before all the people.' And Aaron was silent." (Leviticus 10:1-3)

What could possibly justify the death of Aaron's sons? How could any explanation ever suffice for the murder of six-million Jews? What words might Aaron have uttered? What can we as Jews, still witnesses to such horror and with a feeble attempt to grasp the incomprehensible, say in consolation? Is there any other sane response to such profound loss other than tear-choking silence?

What ensues in our Torah portion is that Aaron grieves in silence, yet he emerges with a voice that rebukes Moses to hold him to the high standards called for in the Priestly rituals.

On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, we too still grieve for the loss of so many innocent lives in silence. Yet we can follow that day by opening our mouths to demand from our leaders that the highest standards of ethics and a commitment to the moral responsibility to protect the helpless be our response to the genocide we STILL witness today.

Join me at the FJCC at 10:30 this Sunday morning as we memorialize the senseless deaths of so many. And may our voices be as the voice of Aaron, calling upon our leaders to bring an end to the injustice and genocide that continues to plague our world.

I wish you all a Shabbat Shalom, a day of peace and rest.

Rabbi Joseph M. Forman