I have just spent a riveting week in a intensive Holocaust seminar for educators that has included doing a variety of readings, engaging in interactive lessons, viewing images, listening to speakers that included a Holocaust survivor and an American World War II liberator, and participating in the shabbat services of a local Jewish congregation. I have learned about the dangers of the single story and the need to make human connections that eliminate those single stories. I have witnessed, through both print and personal testimony, the atrocities perpetrated upon the Jewish people and others by the Nazis. The concentrated exposure to these horrors of inhumanity is emotionally crushing. Yet, there is hope and beauty in the lives of those who survived, in those who resisted, and in those who risked their lives to rescue.

The week has also included the study of our own genocide of Native Americans and the genocide of Tutsi people in Rwanda. Making connections with people who are "other" adds dimension and richness to life. The image that has come to mind repeatedly is of a garden filled with a variety of flowers. A field of daffodils may be beautiful, but a field of wild flowers is breath-taking. I want the dazzling beauty of a multi-cultured world. Therefore, I must speak up for the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the abused, the slaughtered. Knowledge must be coupled with action.

The following prayer from the Jewish prayer book admonishes us to avoid complacency and self-centered oblivion.

Disturb us, Adonai, ruffle us from our complacency;

Make us dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the peace of ignorance,

The quietude which arises from a shunning of the horror, the defeat,

The bitterness and the poverty, physical and spiritual, of humans.

Shock us, Adonai, deny to us the false Shabbat which gives us

The delusions of satisfaction amid a world of war and hatred;

Wake us, O God, and shake us

From the sweet and sad poignancies rendered by

Half forgotten melodies and rubric prayers of yesteryears;

Make us know that the border of the sanctuary is not the border of living

And the walls of Your temples are not shelters

From the winds of truth, justice and reality.

Disturb us, O God, and vex us;

Let not Your Shabbat be a day of torpor and slumber;

Let it be a time to be stirred and spurred to action.

The following is my reflection of this experience.

My stomach is a melon split wide within my skin
      Filled up with the agony of millions.

Gazing into her eyes--connection with humanity,
     Aghast at what she suffered.

She kissed my cheek, she who is not other.

Emotion bubbles up and spills over--sadness and joy intermingled.

                                                I, who did not die, who am still living,
                                                     Must tell the story.

(two lines taken from "Making a Fist" by Naomi Shihab Nye)
See the following link for the digital story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib2vadgcdaE&feature=youtu.be

My mind still swirls with the words, images, sounds that I absorbed this past week. I see the faces of my cohort and the faces of those who were dammed, those who survived, those who liberated, those who tell the story for the ones who have been silenced. Taking Maggie for a walk after returning home yesterday, I had the same sensation one has after losing a loved one to death--"How can the world just keep going? People are driving here and there, engaging in a myriad of activities, and I alone am bearing the weight of the grief and the knowledge of the loss."

The question remains--What do I do with this information/experience? I'm sure that my response will continue to evolve as I move past the initial visceral response. I already know that my week immersed in genocide has reinforced values of love, compassion, hope, perseverance, beauty, the gift of being present in the moment with a person (I see you, I hear you), and the necessity of speaking up about injustice anywhere I see it. I am reminded that even though I may not agree with a person's religion or politics or family values, etc., everyone is created in God's image and thus deserves love and respect. They also deserve to be seen and heard. I don't have to give up my values and beliefs in order to do this. Looking into another person's eyes and making a connection is part of being human and reflects the divine nature. (Lahai Roi--Gen. 16:13-14) Studying the suffering of people underscores the need for love, which seems a trite saying, but actually is at the core of the gospel.