Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

Yom HaShoah begins tonight at sundown: our collective day of remembrance for the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. Confronted with the pure evil of the Holocaust, my words fail me. If you are looking for a way to remember and to mourn – or to uplift and to honor those who survived – this video archive at Yad Vashem offers both survivors’ video testimonies and historical insights into how and why the Shoah happened. I hope you’ll watch a video or two.

Yom HaShoah arrives every year, and yet for many of us this year feels different than any other. A friend of mine texted me today that her lunch in Northampton might be disrupted because there are reports on social media of planned neo-Nazi activity in town. Two of my younger relatives are seeking my mother’s Czech birth certificate in hopes of securing EU citizenship in case it becomes too unsafe to live in this country as Jews. Neither of these things feels normal.

Some of us hear echoes of Nazi eugenics in news stories about people with autism who “will never pay taxes,” as though productivity were the measure of a human being’s worth. Some of us feel alarm about our history and our future as diversity initiatives are shut down. And some of us feel chilled by the imprisonment of anyone without due process.

“Never again” is now. The Shoah didn’t begin with concentration camps and death camps: it began with nativism, a worldview that posited strong white Aryans as inherently better than Jews or people of color or queer people or people with disabilities or people with unpopular political views (in those days, Communists), and the dehumanization of those groups.

As the descendants of a people that against all odds survived Hitler’s extermination attempt, we resist the values that brought it forth. As Jews we stand against nativism, white supremacy, ableism, and derogatory treatment of anyone, including immigrants and people of color. When people (including us) are dehumanized for their identity or their views, it becomes easier to turn away. Instead we are called to metaphorically link arms with other vulnerable communities, and to find strength and purpose in standing together and caring for each other.

I believe that this nation can be a haven for immigrants and refugees, and that the ethical measure of our society is found in how we treat the most vulnerable among us. I believe that our diversity makes us stronger, and that every human being is made in the image of God. And I believe that the best way to honor the memory of those who died in the Shoah, and the memory of those who, trauma-scarred, survived, is to build a world in which we give discrimination no quarter. A world in which all are free to be who we are without fear.

May it be so, speedily and soon.

Blessings to all,

— Rabbi Rachel