There were tears at Yad VaShem and hush-voiced, angry curses.
Yad VaShem is a low highpoint of the trip. The weight of the stories, the
gruesome photos, the video testimonies of survivors and even the building’s
design are unbearably attractive and repulsive at the same time. The place is
packed with guided groups of young, Israeli soldiers brought here as part of
their training. They embody an answer to the question of what we should do with
our feelings about the Holocaust. “Never Again,” can mean: never again will we
be unarmed and unable to defend ourselves.
The image from “Eagles Over Auschwitz” of IAF attack jets flying over the
death camp says the same thing. The building’s design shares another message:
the best response to the Holocaust is simply to live here in
Israel. The
exhibition starts with projected images of Jewish life in
Europe
before the Holocaust: smiling faces, parties, culture, religion. From outside,
however, one can see that the screening room is a section of building that
hangs precipitously over a cliff with no support underneath. The end of the
museum opens widely onto a balcony overlooking the
Jerusalem hills. It says that our story ends
not with utter destruction but renewed life; with real houses filled with Jews
living normally in their ancient homeland. The living land and people of
Israel itself
is the closing shot of the museum.
Undeniably, the Holocaust has a grip on the heart and memory
of the Jewish people. But another response is to remember that it is not our
only story and can not be our defining characteristic. Coming to
Israel is a
kind of pilgrimage inasmuch as it condenses into a short space and time almost
everything about Jewish life, history and identity. One of our teens,
Gabrielle, got that message just a day or two before we visited Yad
VaShem. After meeting students at Yemin
Orde, seeing the treasure of exhibits at the
Israel museum and learning about every
other aspect of Jewish life, she said it simply, “We are not all about the
Holocaust.” It is never to be forgotten and never to be repeated, whatever the
cost. But remembering it shall not be
everything we are. A trip to
Israel
is one of the best ways to see that we are about so much more (just look at another high point in this photo).
There were tears at Yad VaShem and hush-voiced, angry curses.
Yad VaShem is a low highpoint of the trip. The weight of the stories, the
gruesome photos, the video testimonies of survivors and even the building’s
design are unbearably attractive and repulsive at the same time. The place is
packed with guided groups of young, Israeli soldiers brought here as part of
their training. They embody an answer to the question of what we should do with
our feelings about the Holocaust. “Never Again,” can mean: never again will we
be unarmed and unable to defend ourselves.
The image from “Eagles Over Auschwitz” of IAF attack jets flying over the
death camp says the same thing. The building’s design shares another message:
the best response to the Holocaust is simply to live here in 
Undeniably, the Holocaust has a grip on the heart and memory
of the Jewish people. But another response is to remember that it is not our
only story and can not be our defining characteristic. Coming to 
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