The importance of remembering the Shoah

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel – “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah”, literally the “Day of (Remembrance of) the Holocaust and the Heroism.” It is marked on the 27th day in the month of Nisan — a week after the seventh day of Passover, and a week before Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers).

The choice to situate Yom Hashoah close to Pesach was not coincidental. The word “holocaust” originally derived from the Koine Greek word holokauston, meaning “a completely (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering.”  The Hebrew version of the term – the word “Shoah” – has its biblical root in the term “shoah u-meshoah” (wasteness and desolation) that appears in both the Book of Zephaniah (1:15) and the Book of Job (30:3).

Pesach is, of course, the celebration of the sacrifice of the innocent lamb in order that God’s people would be freed. Thus the Shoah and the Exodus are, for the Jewish people, deeply interconnected.

“Yom Hashoah holds great meaning for Jews not only in Israel but also worldwide.”

Yom Hashoah holds great meaning for Jews not only in Israel but also worldwide.  The overwhelming theme that runs through all observances is the importance of remembering the horrific attempted genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its allies — recalling the victims of this catastrophe, and ensuring that such a tragedy never happens again.

It is also a reminder to the nations of the world that the modern State of Israel was born just three years after the horrors of the holocaust in Europe. A nation was born out of destruction.

Just as the Shoah was possible because of the moral corruption in Germany (and beyond), today we are reminded that we must, at all costs, avert the moral decline that underlay the alarming rise of Nazis to power.

“Today, we are witnessing a deeply disturbing spiritual decline and moral confusion in the West.”

Today, we are witnessing a deeply disturbing spiritual decline and moral confusion in the West. Many refuse to understand the difference between good and evil, between truth and lies. In this moral and political vaccuum, powers of darkness and evil are assuming more and more power.

It is in this light that we must understand the claim that is often made today – that Israel is committing another holocaust in Gaza. This is of course a totally warped and distorted twisting of the truth. As Israeli jurist Aharon Barak commented when he was an ad hoc judge on the International Court of Justice last year, it is “imputing the crime of Cain to Abel”.  It is making the victim of violence into an aggressor. Israel is surely not perfect, but it is not attempting to obliterate or destroy either the Palestinians or the people of Gaza. On the contrary, it is fighting a deadly war of self-defence against an enemy that is committed to Israel’s destruction. Israel’s only choice, if it is to survive, is to obliterate Hamas and its allies. The huge number of Palestinians killed in Gaza is a direct consequence of the sins of the leaders of the people of Gaza – Hamas and its allies, as well as their revolutionary Islamist sponsors in Tehran – who adhere to a devastating religion that has as its core aim the elimination of the Jewish people.

And therefore, both the remembrance day of Yom Shoah and the current tragedy in Gaza are a reminder that all the peoples of the earth will face God’s wrath in the Day of Judgment. God cannot tolerate sin, including the attempts to destroy His chosen covenant people.

But God’s judgment is ultimately not about destruction, but about life. The judgment of the nations is connected with the coming of the Messiah, Son of David, in power and glory, who will also, simultaneously, usher in the birth of the Kingdom of righteousness and peace.

As we pray this week, let us acknowledge that the failure of our nations to support the right of the Jewish people to a secure homeland has contributed to growing antisemitism and attacks on Israel. And let us pray more fervently that God will send His Anointed one, who will wipe away the tears from all faces, and remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth (Isaiah 25:8).

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