My bee-induced musings about getting carried away by impressions instead of trusting in Hashem, and our collective response to Israel's current war and the Holocaust.
Great episode. I think you brought up an important question we need to ask ourselves - have we, as Orthodox Jews ever considered what sins within ourselves contributed to the Holocaust and done teshuva for it? Interestingly, and perhaps paradoxically, I think the secular Zionist movement could sort of be viewed as a semi-teshuva movement in response to the horrific pogroms and antisemitism that permeated Europe in the late 19th century, and the Holocaust was the ultimate proof for their claim that Jews needed their own independent state to ward against antisemitism. They chose yom hashoah to be on the 27th of Nissan because that was the anniversary of the failure of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. I think the bravery of the fighters in the Warsaw ghetto represented to them what secular Zionism is all about, and thus they wanted the remembrance of the holocaust to be intimately linked with the most notable example of Jews trying to fight back against the Nazis. In this sense, I think that even though it was divorced from God, the secular Zionist movement did involve themselves in self reflection and action that resembles teshuva.
I heard, but don’t have concrete evidence to back it up, that a significant majority of Jews murdered by the nazis were Orthodox Jews. Some say that’s because they were poorer, but the greatest centers of Torah learning were all in Eastern Europe and if you were a frum person who desired to learn Torah - the best place to be was in Eastern Europe. I don’t know what to make of that except to say that while we definitely mourn over the Torah lost during the holocaust I don’t think the frum community has ever considered that despite all of the great Torah centers there was there something lacking within them that caused such great destruction?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I'll add that we see that Chazal did not hesitate to diagnose the sin which led to the deaths of Rebbi Akiva's 24,000 students. Granted, there is מחלוקת, but the point is that they didn't shy away from the task.
Great episode. I think you brought up an important question we need to ask ourselves - have we, as Orthodox Jews ever considered what sins within ourselves contributed to the Holocaust and done teshuva for it? Interestingly, and perhaps paradoxically, I think the secular Zionist movement could sort of be viewed as a semi-teshuva movement in response to the horrific pogroms and antisemitism that permeated Europe in the late 19th century, and the Holocaust was the ultimate proof for their claim that Jews needed their own independent state to ward against antisemitism. They chose yom hashoah to be on the 27th of Nissan because that was the anniversary of the failure of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. I think the bravery of the fighters in the Warsaw ghetto represented to them what secular Zionism is all about, and thus they wanted the remembrance of the holocaust to be intimately linked with the most notable example of Jews trying to fight back against the Nazis. In this sense, I think that even though it was divorced from God, the secular Zionist movement did involve themselves in self reflection and action that resembles teshuva.
I heard, but don’t have concrete evidence to back it up, that a significant majority of Jews murdered by the nazis were Orthodox Jews. Some say that’s because they were poorer, but the greatest centers of Torah learning were all in Eastern Europe and if you were a frum person who desired to learn Torah - the best place to be was in Eastern Europe. I don’t know what to make of that except to say that while we definitely mourn over the Torah lost during the holocaust I don’t think the frum community has ever considered that despite all of the great Torah centers there was there something lacking within them that caused such great destruction?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I'll add that we see that Chazal did not hesitate to diagnose the sin which led to the deaths of Rebbi Akiva's 24,000 students. Granted, there is מחלוקת, but the point is that they didn't shy away from the task.