It is Yom Hasho'a tonight - Holocaust Memorial evening. I am in Jerusaelm. Here all the t.v. stations are showing films and documentaries, tomorrow the ceremonies and one minute of silence at the sound of a siren. Every year more unimaginably terrible facts come out about the travesties. Every year more evidence that shows that even us third generation of survivors suffer the effects of the heinous traumas systematically inflicted on our grandparents, those of them who managed to survive.
Friends post end of world scenarios, fascism in governments rising, people slowly clueing in that there are monsters in power capable of monstrous things. This is not news to me, this is something I was taught in my childhood, because there was no option of hiding it from me.
I don't want to watch one of the movies tonight, just like I didn't want to go to the Jewish Museum when I lived in Berlin. There is not one day for me to commemorate, (though of course, I respect it). The knowledge of the holocaust is the hyperbole to me of knowledge I wish I didnt have buried in me. Knowledge that blackens and smudges and sours faith in humanity in an irreparable way.
I sway between two things: The first is that disgusting, sickening utterances of hatred and racism and ignorance STILL plague my ears from people old AND young enough to know better, in all parts of the world that I go to, and it fills me with dread and despair. And the second is that there is a consistent flow of remarkale tales of resilience, courage, empathy, and good will that keep me from total mysanthropy and depression. That fill me with light and love and laughter, hope and joyful tears. I do my best to focus on the latter, and moreover, exemplify it.
If we must know , and indeed we must, then let us commit to turn that knowledge into positive reflection and action, empathy and love.
From my Live in Berlin album, where I grapple with this in the form of song, I leave you with a humble reflection, a propos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBlOti-1xw
Friends post end of world scenarios, fascism in governments rising, people slowly clueing in that there are monsters in power capable of monstrous things. This is not news to me, this is something I was taught in my childhood, because there was no option of hiding it from me.
I don't want to watch one of the movies tonight, just like I didn't want to go to the Jewish Museum when I lived in Berlin. There is not one day for me to commemorate, (though of course, I respect it). The knowledge of the holocaust is the hyperbole to me of knowledge I wish I didnt have buried in me. Knowledge that blackens and smudges and sours faith in humanity in an irreparable way.
I sway between two things: The first is that disgusting, sickening utterances of hatred and racism and ignorance STILL plague my ears from people old AND young enough to know better, in all parts of the world that I go to, and it fills me with dread and despair. And the second is that there is a consistent flow of remarkale tales of resilience, courage, empathy, and good will that keep me from total mysanthropy and depression. That fill me with light and love and laughter, hope and joyful tears. I do my best to focus on the latter, and moreover, exemplify it.
If we must know , and indeed we must, then let us commit to turn that knowledge into positive reflection and action, empathy and love.
From my Live in Berlin album, where I grapple with this in the form of song, I leave you with a humble reflection, a propos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnBlOti-1xw
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