A meditation on Kristallnacht.

I want to begin with a poem by Dan Pagis. Pagis was born in 1930 and spent three years in a Nazi camp. He emigrated to Palestine in 1946 and became one of Israel's most celebrated poets. This poem is called "written in pencil in the sealed boxcar." (1)

   here in this carload
   I am eve
   with abel my son
   if you see my older boy
   cain son of adam
   tell him that I

The poet leaves us to wonder what it was that Eve said, or if she said anything at all. Did she pour out her heart or find that what she wanted to communicate was inexpressible?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the face of the reality of unfathomable loss that our people suffered, words seem, as they do so often, inadequate. One is tempted to say that silence is the only appropriate response. But we also know that silence was a response, an abdication of responsibility, the ultimate result of which was complicity if not collaboration.

And so we must use words, however inadequate they are, to address God, to address the past, but most important, I think, to address each other. That is what we are doing here this morning in this sacred moment.

I for one do not look for meaning in the Shoa, in the Holocaust. Those who suggest that the Shoa took place to teach us a lesson or to make the rebirth of the state of Israel possible have not, in my opinion, thought it through sufficiently. I find the suggestion that it happened for a reason, or that it was part of God's plan, unacceptable, even obscene.

Irving Greenberg wrote:

... what shall be spoken in a generation when thousands went by dogs and
by fire, when over a million innocent children were savagely killed? No
statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be
credible in the presence of burning children. Any easy affirmation of
God would appear to mock the burning children. Any easy denial of God
would appear to turn the children's deaths into a gigantic travesty. A
simple denial of God would appear to deny the reality of redemption in
our time and the validation of biblical promise by contemporary
fulfillment. (2)

There is a connection between Greenberg's words and our presence here this morning. We have come together with our knowledge of the past, but with our eyes focused on the future. We meet in prayer and in consultation and in study because we recognize that "redemption in our time," if it is to happen at all, will not appear miraculously like manna from heaven. Rather, it will be built slowly by people of good will reaching, stretching, grasping to unite the sparks of divinity that have been scattered throughout God's creation. We cannot restore the broken glass that we commemorate this morning to its former state. We cannot go back in time, we cannot bring to back to life the men, the women, the children, the communities, the culture that have been lost. Perhaps, however, we can take those shards of glass and create a new mosaic that can serve as a memorial, and inspiration, and a sign of the covenant between us as human beings and between us and God.

    If you see my older son Cain,
    the son of adam, tell him that I

In humility, we pray that we can find words that lead us on the paths to shalom.

1. The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, ed. T. Carmi (New York: Penguin Books, 1981), 575.

2. Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays (New York: Summit Books, 1988).

David Fox Sandmel

K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago

Crown-Ryan Professor of Jewish Studies, CTU

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