Four score years ago in April 1943, the Jews of Warsaw rose in armed resistance to their German occupiers.   In the free world, Jews were celebrating Passover, the historic journey from slavery in Egypt and the journey through the dessert to the Promised Land millennia ago.  In ghettos of occupied Poland – even in the death camps – Jews were eating the bread of affliction for years yet even they could dream of freedom, “Now we are slaves, next year”.… Will there be a next year, they wondered? Will there be a next day?  Read more...

The new state of Israel declared its independence on the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyyar. The partition of Palestine was determined by a narrow vote of the United Nations on the 29th of November, 1947. Independence was declared seven months later, at a time eight hours before the end of the British Palestine mandate on May 15, 1948. Hence the date was determined by the exigencies of international politics. Read more...

Perhaps it is a hangover from Passover but as we observe this Yom Hashoah I find myself asking, “why is this Yom Hashoah different from all others? As in the Haggadah, let’s deepen the question. On most other years, the shadow of genocide did not loom so large, on this year, it looms very large in the deeds of President Putin and of the Russian Army, in the killing fields of Ukraine and in the mouth of President Biden. Read more...

As we commemorate Yom Hasho'ah we again realize the distance that separates us from the event. We are in the midst of a transition between lived history and historical memory. Survivors who were but teenagers at the end of the war are now well into their nineties and the last survivors will be children survivors whose experience was all too real, yet whose recollections are often pre-verbal, images and feelings, which at a distance they were able to transmit in words. Read more...