Emil Fackenheim said that after the Holocaust we were given a 614th commandment, that is to live as Jews and carry on the Jewish People.Here is his famous quote from, ‘To mend a world ‘ that is our great challenge:
‘We are, first, commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. We are commanded, secondly, to remember in our very guts and bones the martyrs of the Holocaust, lest their memory perish. We are forbidden, thirdly, to deny or despair of God, however much we may have to contend with him or with belief in him, lest Judaism perish. We are forbidden, finally, to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted. To abandon any of these imperatives, in response to Hitler’s victory at Auschwitz, would be to hand him yet other, posthumous victories.’
To read more by the Klausenberger Rebbe, Ha’Rav Amital ZT’L, Rabbi Sacks and resources from R’Johnny Solomon and the COJS website, check out the rest of the article on the IsraelK website:
http://israelk.org/2016/05/yom-hashoah-2016-educational-package-lessons-future-generations/
Write a comment: