CN: Holocaust references
I came into the shul and it was full, packed to standing room in the back, with people sitting on the floor. And then we were going to say kaddish. Normally when you do this, the people who are in mourning stand up if they are able to, and the rabbi looks around and when she looks toward you, you say the name of the person you are mourning for and when everyone is done the mourners lead the prayer and it’s quiet and solemn and orderly. But this time everyone who was able to stood up and this whole crowded shul was full of people standing. And then the rabbi said to everyone, say the names of the people you are mourning for, and people said them, all at once, in a huge crashing wave of names going in every direction, and then it was over. And she said, more. And people said more names and we were crying and the names welled up and filled the shul, up to the roof, and then we were quiet. And she said, more! And people said more and more names, jagged and chaotic and loud, and one person said, I don’t know their names! And then we were quiet. And she talked about how we mourn for everyone whose names we can say, and also for those who died without even the dignity of a name to be remembered, and how there are a limited number of souls and we share them, from generation to generation, l’dor vador, and no one can ever fall out of that cycle or be lost, even if we don’t know their names, even if we can’t remember. And then we said kaddish together. She talked about how grief has to come before action, grief is essential, feeling and facing our grief allows us to stay human. And about how joy is an act of defiance. She told us the story of the Lublin Jews who sang mir veln zey iberlebn, we will outlive you, in defiance, when Nazis took them out to an empty field and ordered them to sing. I went to another event later, even though I was late and a mess, because I couldn’t stand to be alone. It was in this tiny, rickety white shul, and I could see a few people inside. As I walked in, a friend came running up to me and threw herself into my arms, sobbing, and we held each other and cried, and then a year later we pulled back and she said, I’m glad you came, would you like a cookie, and I said yes and she gave me one. There were five or six of us, sitting in a circle on the ground, with a few others off to the side. They talked quietly and passed around whiskey and chocolate cookies and I ate cookies and didn’t say anything because I couldn’t think of anything to say. I just held hands with my friend and listened. And then most people left but a few of us stayed and did readings with an oracle deck. While we were doing that, someone went outside and saw that the neighbors had left flowers on the steps, a big crystal vase full of the last autumn dahlias from someone’s yard, with a card that said, you do not cry alone tonight. We all started to cry again and a different person threw themselves into my arms, and after a while we stopped and did one more reading, and there was a cat sitting in front of the heater and she was so quiet and serene and beautiful and I watched her and felt safe. I am part of so many communities, overlapping in complex, difficult ways. We are full of so much fear and grief and courage and defiance. The lesson of the Lublin Jews in the empty field--one of the lessons--is this: they died. We don’t know what happened to them for sure; all we know is that of the 42,000 Jews of Lublin, 300 lived. But even though they almost certainly died, we still outlived the Nazis. WE did. Some of us have died. Some of us are going to die in the days to come. All of us will eventually die. But we can still be defiant, in our bottomless grief and collective identity and history and power, in the joy of our solidarity and the peace of showing the fuck up for what we know is right even when it’s dangerous, we can still fight and we can still win and we can outlive them. Mir veln zey iberlebn.
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7/2/2023 03:56:25 pm
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