THERE IS NO BOOK

The Biblical Book of Lamentations was written to mourn the first exile of the Jews, when they were carried off into captivity in Babylon. But there is no book in the Canon to bewail the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century C.E. at the hands of the Nazis. That book deserves to be written while some of the people who survived that ordeal still walk the Earth.

Today is Yom ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. There’s no special liturgy for this day - not yet, anyway. We say the usual morning prayers, just as we would on any weekday. But today, when I led our morning minyan’s service, I added a prayer for the Six Million - and an extra Mourner’s Kaddish, recited by everyone.

The prayer is Eil Malei Rachamim (Exalted, compassionate God), and its distinctive, plaintive melody is normally heard at funerals, unveilings, memorial services, and Yahrzeits. [Many congregations have the custom of not saying this particular prayer during the month of Nisan (which ends Monday and Tuesday of next week) - but ours does. Go figure...]

Eil malei rachamim, shokhein bam'romim, ham'tzei m'nuchah n'khonah tachat kanfei hash'khinah b'ma-alot k'doshim u-t'horim k'zohar harakia maz-hirim, et nishmot kol acheinu b'nei Yisrael, anashim nashim v'taf, she-nit'b'chu v'she-nech'n'ku v'she-nis'r'fu v'she-nehergu, b'gan eiden t'hi m'nuchatam. Ana ba'al harachamim, hastireim b'seiter k'nafekha l'olamim utz'ror bitzror hachayim et nishmoteihem. HaShem Hu nachalatam, v'yanuchu v'shalom al mishk'voteihem. V'nomar amein.

Exalted, compassionate God, grant perfect peace in Your sheltering Presence, among the holy and the pure, to the souls of all our brethren, men, women, and children of the House of Israel who were slaughtered and suffocated and burned to ashes. May their memory endure, inspiring truth and loyalty in our lives. May their souls thus be bound up in the bond of life. May they rest in peace. And let us say: Amen.

It has been sixty years since the fall of the Nazi death machine. A mere tick of the cosmic clock...a tick that encompasses my entire lifetime. And since then, our collective cries of “Never Again!” resound uselessly in the halls of the United Nations.

Cambodia.

Bosnia.

Rwanda.

Darfur.

The list goes on. None of them come anywhere near matching the Holocaust of the European Jews for sheer magnitude, but try telling that to one of the victims. The human capacity for hate and cruelty still manages to find expression.

There is no Book of Twentieth Century Lamentations yet, but someone needs to write it...and a thousand, two thousand, three thousand years from now, may there still be someone who will say a blessing and then chant its words...so that our children’s children’s children never forget.