At joint prayers that will be held this evening, the eve
of Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Memorial Day, the people
of the theological seminary of the Conservative movement
in Israel (The Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies) and
members of the Kol Haneshama Reform congregation will read
for the first time the Holocaust Scroll, the first religious
text of its sort to deal with the Holocaust, in the spirit
of the Book of Lamentations.
In the Holocaust Scroll there are six short chapters (the
symbolic context of the number is clear).The first deals
with the historical background to the Holocaust; the second
contains the testimony of a Christian who sneaked into the
Warsaw ghetto and describes what he saw; the third tells
the story of a Jewish woman in a labor camp; the fourth
is the testimony of a young Jew, Yaakov Halevy, who was
made to work in a concentration camp at getting rid of corpses
and was forced, among other things, to pull the gold teeth
out of the mouth of his dead brother.
In this chapter the theological axis of the scroll also
begins, as the young religious Jew says: "How hard
the Lord of the universe has worked so that we will lose
our faith in him, but despite His efforts we have not done
so." He also describes himself as a walking dead man,
and therefore requests: "When I die again, do not tear
your garments as a sign of bereavement and do not mourn
me, for there is no death after death." And: "Do
not try to ask why. What I have not done, others should
not do because of me."
The fifth chapter is the message of a "voice"
from heaven - rhythmic verses that begin with "For
these I weep" (a phrase from the Book of Lamentations),
to which the congregation replies with the same words. This
voice goes on to mention the calamities that occurred during
the Holocaust and in contrast to the young man from the
previous chapter ends its message demonstratively with the
posing of the theological question: "How perplexed
I stood before the screen, before the Merciful, the Compassionate
and replete with Grace and Truth, I asked and I pleaded
and I wanted to understand: Is this known in heaven? Has
the all merciful Lord passed this sentence? Is this a people
and this its reward? And lo, there is no voice and no response,
only angry silence. He sits in the supreme secret and in
the shade of silence he will complain. Deep and hidden and
terrible are these things. No one can understand them; learn
to live without an answer. In our blood, live!"
Appelfeld was unsuitable
The scroll is the result of an initiative by people at
the Schechter Institute and was written by Professor Avigdor
Shinan of the Institute of Jewish studies at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, an observant Jew and the son of
Holocaust survivors, who though he is not a member of the
Conservative movement, has taught at its institutions for
many years and is close to its people.
Rabbi Professor David Golinkin, president and rector of
the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, was a key person
in the initiative to write the scroll and is also chairman
of the academic advisory board. He describes the process:
"In the Conservative movement Holocaust Martyrs and
Heroes Memorial Day had already taken on religious significance
some time ago. It is clear to us that in order for the memory
of the Holocaust to remain forever, even after the survivors
have passed away, it had to find expression in the traditional
Jewish way - in the synagogue. We declared this day to be
a public fast day, and unlike the Orthodox synagogues, in
which only the ordinary prayers are said, in our synagogues
we add to the service works that have been written about
the Holocaust like `The Partisans' Song' alongside the prayers
El Maleh Rahamim (God Full of Mercy} and Yizkor (traditional
memorial prayer).
"But all these years I've felt that one of the key
motifs of the way Judaism has dealt with persecutions in
the past was missing - the writing of a scroll. The familiar
model of course is the Book of Lamentations. What is less
known is that also in the Middle Ages, communities would
write local scrolls in memory of local oppressions inflicted
on them, and thus Rabbi Shabtai Cohen also wrote a scroll
after the Chmelnitzki pogroms in the 17th century."
According to Golinkin, "The current initiative began
on Yom Kippur in 1999, two-and-a-half years ago, at the
Conservative synagogue in Toronto, where I officiate during
the High Holidays. At the end of the Kol Nidre service,
Alex Eisen, a veteran member of the congregation and a Holocaust
survivor, came up to me and told me that for a long time
he had been trying to advance the idea of writing a scroll
in memory of the Holocaust. He had gone to Rabbi [Yisrael]
Lau [the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel], and he refused;
he had contacted Bar-Ilan University, where after a year
and a half, they replied and told him that they were not
interested, and then he came to us. We thought it was an
excellent idea and we put together a committee to advance
it."
The first writer the committee turned to was author Aharon
Appelfeld. This was considered to be almost the natural
choice - a Holocaust survivor and man of letters whose writing
is focused on the Holocaust. Appelfeld did take up the challenge
but the text he wrote did not appeal to the people in the
movement. Appelfeld: "I thought that such a scroll
should go in the direction of the Books of Esther and Ruth,
that is, to tell a story that becomes a symbol. I though
that a formal and inclusive text, which might perhaps be
suited to ancient texts, could seem problematic in our day.
Therefore the model of a threnody based on that of the Book
of Lamentations did not seem right to me. In this spirit
I wrote a narrative text that is based on my own biographical
story, but they thought this was not the right direction.
In effect, I've understood that the people in the [Conservative]
movement in Israel accepted it, but their colleagues in
the United States were opposed."
Golinkin confirms the substance of what Appelfeld says:
"It was a very beautiful story, but it did not suit
our desire for a text with religious significance."
In the spirit of the historical models, it can be said that
the people in the movement preferred the Lamentations model
to the model of the Books of Ruth and Esther.
When the connection with Appelfeld failed, Professor Shinan,
who was a member of the academic committee that followed
Appelfeld's work, decided to try his hand. Shinan: "I
was born right after the war in Prague to parents who had
gone through those years with great difficulty. My father
was released from Auschwitz, and my mother from the camp
at Thereisenstadt. In our house the subject of the Holocaust
was hardly discussed aloud. My father has died in the meantime,
and today my mother talks to my daughters about the Holocaust
much more than she spoke about it with me. For years I repressed
the subject inside me. And now, when I sat down at the computer,
everything that had accumulated since the Eichmann trial
suddenly burst forth. I wrote the first draft in six hours,
and afterward, of course, we worked on it, in accordance
with consultations with the committee."
Shinan relates that the writing of the scroll was based
on "testimonies that I know personally, books of memoirs
and testimonies, community books and also reviews of books
that deal with the Holocaust." He also integrated his
experience as a researcher of midrashic literature.
A paralyzing task
The task that Shinan and the Conservative Movement took
upon themselves is almost impossible. The canonical texts
of the prayer book were not usually planned in advance to
have this status. They became sanctified in a process that
took many years. This project is an ambitious and perhaps
pretentious task - to write a religious text about an event
that in any case cannot be "covered" in a text
- with the express intention of making it canonical. And
all this when the author is neither a great rabbi nor a
writer nor a poet.
To this Shinan says: "I have no doubt that many will
criticize me and ask `who appointed you?'
My reply will be: That moment of inspiration when I set
about writing the text. I also said to myself: Who am I
to do a thing that my betters did not do? This is without
a doubt a paralyzing task and one that is full of anxiety,
but the words just burst out of me."
Golinkin adds some clarifications of his own. "It
is not true that in our generation new religious texts haven't
been written. It is a fact that the Prayer for the Peace
of the State and the prayer for Israel Defense Forces soldiers
were written, and there is a special El Maleh Rahamim for
the Holocaust. So the problem isn't an objection in principle
to writing new religious texts; apparently it depends on
which text we're talking about. As far back as 20 years
ago there was an article published in an ultra-Orthodox
journal called Hamaor in which the writer, a Holocaust survivor
called upon `great rabbis' to assemble and write a scroll
on the pattern of Lamentations about the Holocaust. But
the ultra-Orthodox world of our day is incapable of doing
this. In that same issue of the journal the editor himself
expressed reservations about the `strange idea.' As for
the fact that this text wasn't written by a rabbinical figure
- that's exactly the trap. We are comfortable with the text
and its writer because we are not judging the text by the
writer but rather by the contents."
Golinkin notes that in contrast to books of the Bible,
the new scroll was not written on parchment, by a scribe's
hand, but rather in ordinary print letters on ordinary paper,
"and thus the halakhic (Jewish legal) question was
avoided as to whether it is necessary to say a blessing
on reading it." Golinkin had wanted it to be chanted
in a melody similar to that used for the chanting of Lamentations,
but Shinan objected because of the fear that this might
look like a "parody of Lamentations." As a compromise,
in the meantime, it has been agreed that only two short
portions of the scroll will be read to the melody for Lamentations
and the rest will be read in the ordinary way.
In addition to the first reading tonight, the scroll will
also be read tomorrow afternoon as part of the fasting service
for the people at the Schechter Institute, accompanied by
explanations by Golinkin and Professor Dalia Ofer, a historian
who followed its composition. The scroll has already been
distributed to Conservative congregations in Israel; the
preparation of a version in English for distribution to
Conservative congregations abroad has been delayed. Golinkin
hopes that by next Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Memorial
Day, it will become an integral part of the Holocaust Heroes
and Martyrs Memorial Day service in Conservative congregations
around the world.
"I hope that the Reform movement will also adopt it,
and who knows, maybe it will also be accepted by the national
religious public. In any case, this will be its real test,"
says Golinkin.
