Today, again, I joined with the Westchester community at the Memorial Garden to commemorate Yom HaShaoh. As I have done for the past 10 years I carried the Neuburger Sefer Torah rescued from Germany as I represented our holy community.
As we stood in the solemn stillness of Yom HaShoah, a day etched in the memory of our people, we do so again this year with hearts doubly burdened — carrying not only the unfathomable loss of the six million, but the ongoing pain of those still held captive since October 7th.
A survivor of the Holocaust, reaches across time to remind us: “The world watched us burn once. I fear it is watching again.” And from the depths of that fear rises a defiant breath — the same breath that sustained our people through the Shoah, and now sustains us again, as we wait. As we remember. As we refuse to forget.
A victim of October 7th, whispers: “The waiting is a wound.” And yet, it is a wound we do not bear alone. We can hear the conversations between the sages of pain, the survivors of the Holocaust and their students, the victims of October 7th.
In this interchange between generations of Jewish suffering, we hear the echo of centuries — of exile, of silence, of trauma layered upon trauma. How many times in our history have we commemorated old horrors while enduring new ones? From the destruction of the Temple to the Chmielnicki massacres, from the Shoah to today — we have always lived and mourned in the same breath.
“What is to give light must endure burning,” wrote Viktor Frankl. And so we burn — not with despair, but with the sacred fire of memory, of protest, of prayer. We burn with the promise that we will not let those still in darkness be forgotten. We will speak their names. We will light candles not as a conclusion, but as a call. Today, we remember. And today, we still wait.
But we do not wait in silence.
Greenburgh Hebrew Center rabbistein@ghcny.org 515 Broadway Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522 914-693-4260 office@ghcny.org www.ghcny.org
