Yom HaShoah

 So today is a rather dour one on the Jewish calendar -- Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rabbi Yossi and several of our friends are taking part in this year's March of the Living -- where they visit death camps in Poland, followed by a joyous stay in Israel. This year's is particularly poignant, as Israel is celebrating her 75th anniversary.

Rabbi Yossi has been sending videos of Auschwitz, as well as squares in Polish cities like Krakow, where Jewish life flourished before it was wiped out. One moving video showed shops with Mezuzah marks -- now just hollowed out parts of the door frames.

Yossi has asked me several times to go one one of these trips, and my responsive quip is that I participate in "Marriage of the Living," as Wifey is the daughter of Survivors. No one in our immediate family was affected by the Holocaust -- they all high tailed it out of Eastern Europe after some Russian pogroms -- but I have learned A LOT about the Shoah -- more than I dreamed I ever would.

Turns out the trauma of the times for my in laws -- having their whole families killed, and being put in slave and concentration camps as teens and young adults -- wasn't the end of it. No -- we still have to fight the demons of those times, in ways I could never have imagined.

Wifey has friends with similar backgrounds, who seem perfectly normal, and yet harbor deep feelings of persecution and distrust. Trespasses that non Survivor progeny might laugh off become deep seated "plots of evil." I still learn more about these over the years.

But still -- we realize how fortunate we are. And I chose to, today, recall D2 and Jonathan's wedding, in late January of 2020. Jonathan, like D2, is the grandson of Survivors. His grandmother Judy, one of the coolest people I have ever known, survived when righteous gentile neighbors put her into a convent as a little girl, in Hungary. To this day, Judy knows many Catholic customs better than actual Catholics -- and Judy has lived a life beyond any Hollywood movie. She has become a true matriarch of her family -- ruling with strength and love. She deemed D2 would become another granddaughter, and it came to pass. She and I enjoyed special celebratory hugs at the wedding.

Anyway -- Rabbi Yossi officiated that glorious evening. The chuppah was set up on the rooftop of the Betsy Hotel in South Beach. The Atlantic was across the street, and the sun was setting over the glorious Miami skyline. The light was so beautiful as to look fake -- like a film's lighting director contrived it.

Rabbi Yossi threw a curve ball. He said he never mentions the Holocaust during weddings -- why bring sadness to a joyous event. But he was too moved looking at the beautiful faces of the bride and groom -- both grandkids of Survivors -- and how it was the ultimate F You to Hitler and the Nazis. Of course, he said it more eloquently, but that was the clear message -- and it was one of pride, and hope, for the future.

My Dad would have cried. He wasn't at all religious -- he rebelled against the Orthodox upbringing he had -- but he was a fiercely proud Zionist Jew. Of course, he was cremated, as was my Mom, and their ashes placed into the Atlantic. I like to think their spirits were with us that evening, too. 

I greatly dislike when groups play the victim card. Everyone has suffered, at some point. The question is what you do going forward. 

And from two sickly young Jewish Poles, liberated by Russian soldiers, to two generations later having thriving, strong granddaughters, married to awesome young men, and now two beautiful grandsons -- well -- that to me means everything. That's how I will acknowledge this holiday.