ETERNALIZED MEMORIES
the Holocaust
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After speaking to two child survivors, we learned one turned to religion and one turned against the idea of God. We spoke to Rabbi, Yanky Raskin, about Judaism and the Holocaust.
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Can you tell us why some people turn to religion and others against religion when they go through something bad?
Their connection to God was unhindered, it didn’t have a say in it – it didn’t have a question. Perhaps the understanding of god, as we evolve, as the reality around us evolves and there’s something there. There is some connection to something higher – to something that knows them, that something cares about them – old qualities are attributed to an intelligence that is present in their life that was never present, even though those circumstance and, it’s miraculous, like you would think people going through such event would lose all hope and all faith and anything to say what god? Yet we do find these accounts that there is a group in such a category. For the people that have, so to speak, have lost faith, it’s interesting in the words you said, there isn’t even a denial of God. It’s like God took everything away from me, as opposed to saying there can’t be a God, and there has been those who have said that as well.
If you were there you know it, if you weren’t you don’t know it, so I think that’s very important to understand, you don’t even being to understand what these people went through. I would say the same thing to someone who has been through a pain we could relate to - that we should never really compare ourselves to it, but the way I, from personal experience, and speaking to different rabbis and other people who worked with people that have been through different traumas, you find it’s a very common thing that people who go through trauma, they’ll often not want to have anything to do with religion and God and, really a lot of the time, it’s much more than that, they’re hopeless. They don’t believe that there’s any meaning in life or any purpose in life that is not anything more than what is because of what they’ve been through in their personal experience and very often a Rabbi or a friend or a regular person, someone that is standing by, there just doing life will try and kind of impose or push God on them or push meaning onto a person, instead of realizing that sometimes you just have to be a friend and be there for the person. It’s not appropriate to engage in that conversation. When certain people tell you they don’t believe it’s like, it’s not the place to engage in conversations about belief. It’s inappropriate, it’s definitely not my place, maybe there’s someone out there that does see it as their place and your connection to God is very personal. Another person questions of God, that’s their relationship to God or whatever life means to them. Their experience is unique to them and I have no say in that. Who am I to come and challenge that and say anything to that and I think, in genera,l that’s the first thing that needs to be done is to acknowledge a person’s world and not to impose something on to it.
When something tragic happens we can either let it dictate how life is going to play out and be like okay this is it, I’m just going to, I’m a victim as to what happened and this is the end of my life, it’s the end of the story and this is the end of the story of the people and the end of the story of humanity or there is an alternative that may not always seem so obvious, but is a very hopeful one.
Can you talk about the importance of one life?
If you’re a teacher or even a friend, we look around and say there are so many people, so if one person isn’t doing well, does it matter really? It’s one person. But the truth is, having an effect on one person is changing the course for generations and generations to come because everything begins with one person. All of mankind begins with one couple, with Adam and Eve. It all begins somewhere and it’s very often when we discount people. I think a lot of time it comes from the lack of self-belief in our self, it doesn’t come from a positive place. How much can I achieve? What difference can I make in this world? Could I make such a big difference?
If there’s a community of people that are attacked and they’re taken hostage and they say if you hand us over one person then all of you will be saved, but if not were going to kill all of you. So according to the Torah, there’s definitely one opinion that says you’re not allowed to hand over a human being. It brings out this point that who’s to say who’s blood is redder than the others. This person life, like how do you know the value of a person to say this life is worth more than others? You really have to enter into a different way of thinking and appreciate that because if you think, so to speak, logically, logic would say, what do you mean? Cut one out, what’s the big deal, it’s obvious. But if you move into another head space where you see life directly not through the limits of the human mind, you can start seeing why. Like giving one life doesn’t make sense. This is definitely one of the holistic and Torah thought, these are the underlying principles that this is what is means to believe in god.
What does it mean to believe in God? What is God? Ultimately to believe in God is to believe in the infinite value of every person or every human being of everything in the world of every moment and every action that we take and to deepen our belief means to deepen our appreciation of why the Torah gives commandants. What does it mean there’s consequences – do this and don’t do that. What it’s telling you is that it matters what you do really really matters. The more weight the world carries, in a way that is empowering, than you know you’re a man of faith and from that perspective it’s not a number thing, it’s every soul is infinite it’s infinity. In numbers, it matters, a million is more than one, a billion is more than a million, but in the world of infinity, numbers don’t play a role, so if you look at life as a presence of a human being as an infinite being, then it’s infinity so you have six million people it’s six million times infinity. You have one person, it’s one person times infinity, so if you kill one person, you destroy something that is of an infinite power, of atomic energy.So it comes of an appreciation of a deep belief in what we are as a people, as a human being. And most of the people killed were Jews and the Jewish people were given a role to teach this very message that were speaking about over here, so to take a person that was charged with a mission of sheering the infinite power that exists within every individual and to take such a person and kill them, there is no words for it.
What was the importance for Jewish people to have a place like Israel to call home right after the holocaust?
It was very clear for the Jewish people at the time, it was a point of pride, it was a point of way of saying you know were not going to let this happen again to us and it was a big boost of strength for the Jewish people of a whole. It has it’s controversy form a religious point of view and other points of view as well but ultimately we have to realize is, and I think in Israel today, in the amount of history and corruption, that there was a certain initial passion and presence that the first Israelis have and the Kibbutz to serve and fight for the people that isn’t that strong as it was.
How does religion explain the holocaust?
There’s no answer. We don’t dare get to have an answer to such a thing.
We can either take a path or say there’s no meaning, there’s no purpose and nothing matters or we can say no. The fact that we have such a strong response to such an atrocity, something that we can’t even fathom, speaks to inner knowledge of the infinite value of life and the meaning that the presence of it and its all around us and it’s a call for us to say to live a life that perhaps we would have never of lived.
How can survivors forgive?
Who says they have to forgive?
The way I see it today, is that there are many ways a person’s life could unfold and let’s say a person is going down one path, why is he taking that one path, but they’re taking it and then something happens to them and now that path is not an option anymore and it’s a tragedy if someone dies or something one hurts them, abuses them. It’s not a question of forgiveness, but if a person can the ability of starting over or of doing life differently than the way they thought or believed or the way they imagined life should be. One that may include different degrees of pain. Or as parents, we try and keep our children naive and keep them away from pain and hurt, but as far as I could tell everyone goes through things in life where things happen.
The question then becomes can we find a way of being with what happened, not despite what happened, not making believe it didn’t happen, all these responses come from somehow belief that there isn’t a way for me to be now fully with what I’ve been through and ultimately we know that if we can find it and were in that place, the past, or the things that happened to us, don’t hold us victim anymore, which is what we’re trying to do when we’re trying to forgive. A big part of it is being able to move on, but we can’t make believe that we can go back, we can’t make believe that what happened didn’t happen. In Jewish law, it’s not such thing that a person does something wrong, they don’t have to forgive you right away, they don’t have to forgive you, it’s not automatic, certain actions are done and there are consequences and, again, is there a possibility of forgiveness, there is such a thing people often say that innocence in other people can often mean forgiveness and can understand that they acted out of, they weren’t human at the time and that’s grounds for an individual to forgive another. There’s different reasons and ways for people to find it, but it’s important not to impose it or even to expect it of ourselves and definitely not of another person. Again, it’s understanding, it’s living a life of understanding.
From my experience I’ve never seen that it’s an obligation that they have to forgive the Nazis, I haven’t seen anything like that. Openly, the mandate was to always, our call of duty is to take care of ourselves because if we don’t take care of ourselves, we can’t properly take care of the people around us and to find within us the ability to rise above and to look deeper and to find a way of being in this world and that is super powerful – tapping into this infinity that were talking about to one degree or another and we all know it eternally because we all possess it and our mandate is to help those around us when we see they don’t see it to help them see it. When we look at them we should see is not their limited self, but to see how much bigger they are and there’s something within them that is much bigger than everything than everything that they’ve been through and that will allow them to carry to go with their past. Sometimes a person moves on. I don’t think there’s a one size fits all or it happens a certain way, but I think one of the things we have to realize is that, I’ve heard this from people who have been through very challenging childhoods is that, where they didn’t always move on as if something never happened, something happened, things have happened, but they live a life where they’re not constantly fighting to survive and they’re not constantly angry. They’re life isn’t being dictated solely by what happened to them. They found a way to live life fully and to be present within life as it is – together with what happened, which looks different cause of what happened. This isn’t saying a person has to do this or a person should do this, I don’t think any person would ever chose a life a living hell or no one would ever want to hurt themselves in such a way and if they are it’s because they don’t see of another possibility and that’s the first thing we need to know about ourselves and the people around us when we see a person stuck in such a way. What all the texts and what our Sages and people of wisdom who have been trying to tell us was, they weren’t judging us, they were like windows, like eyes, telling us, yeah, you can live a life on this level of consciousness and there’s a whole other dimension that is available to us.