Yom Ha-Shoah v'Ha-Gevurah
Reflections by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
April 24, 2025
Today is Yom Ha-Shoah v'Ha-Gevurah, the Day of Commemoration of the Holocaust and Heroism. The Hebrew term shoah literally means disaster and destruction; today, it is used only to describe the most terrible disaster to befall the Jewish People in the last two thousand years. Yet our minds find it impossible to describe in words something quite so terrible. No word or thought can begin to contain the depth of suffering of those who lived through and experienced—directly or indirectly—the greatest of horrors that humanity could invent or inflict upon others, helpless, defenseless men, women and infants. The world has not been the same since the Shoah. No one who has ever seen a picture or heard a witness's story can ever erase the effect on their soul of such evil. When the State of Israel instituted this day of commemoration, it chose the day on which the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began, on the holiday of Passover in 1943. The symbolism of this choice could not be more relevant today, when the Jewish People are once again subjected to the oldest hatred and prejudice, as we witness the greatest surge of antisemitism since the Shoah ended in 1945. The common (somehow humorous, somehow sarcastic) saying in Israel today is: we survived Pharaoh; we will survive this too.
But commemoration is never enough; in time it tends to become formalized and lose its original meaning and purpose. Thus the need to think about the "Gevurah" part of the name of this day. Gevurah means heroism. But like all words that are meant to be a symbol, in this particular case too, gevurah is inadequate. On the one hand we see, imprinted in our minds and souls, the lines of Jewish men, women and children forced to board the trains that will take them to Auschwitz; we hear the deafening silence imposed upon them as they wait in line to enter the gas chambers. On the other hand, we learn of the uprisings in Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. We learn about the partisans (my mother, of blessed memory, along with many of her friends, was one of those heroes), and those of many nations who resisted the Nazis and their accomplices.
Yet even that doesn't begin to encompass the actual heroism: The defiance—even when the world was silent; the strong will to survive—despite the impossible and improbable hardships and challenges; the love and compassion shown by many ghetto and camp inmates to one another, standing in such great contrast to the evil that surrounded them; and the survival of faith, even in the death camps. These are the broad categories within which we can begin to understand the heroism—the gevurah—of the victims and survivors of the Shoah.
When I was growing up in Israel, almost all the adults I knew were survivors. Most of them had lost their faith in God. And yet, even they persisted in carrying on holiday and cultural traditions. Through the years, many of them (and their children, of whom I am one), rediscovered their faith, reclaimed the belief in a merciful and compassionate God. Today we hear a reflection of that in the stories of some of the Gaza hostages who said that it was faith that helped them survive the physical and emotional abuse that was inflicted on them by the evil terrorists. One helped reconstruct—in captivity!—a Passover seder for herself and some of her fellow captives; another started saying the Sh'ma every day; still another recently returned to the shelter that failed him and from which he was abducted, to wrap tefillin around his arm and repeat the words of the Sh'ma, expressing his belief in the eternal Covenant between God and the Jewish People. The strength to tell and retell—over and over again, to whoever would listen—their stories of horror, tragedy and survival takes tremendous strength. The will to continue living, despite the loss of family, spouses and children, brothers and sisters, takes tremendous strength and faith.
That is the gevurah—the Heroism—that we are asked (in fact, commanded!) to remember today. The common perception in the days, weeks and even years that immediately followed the Shoah is that the Jews allowed themselves to be led to the slaughter "like sheep." Far from it. Faith strengthened us then and continues to do so today. In his important book Faith After the Holocaust, the great Rabbi Eliezer Berkovitz (1908-1992) writes: "He who demands justice of God must give up man; he who asks for God's love and mercy beyond justice must accept suffering."
May the memories of those who perished in the Shoah—Jews, non-Jews, homosexuals, Roma and so many others—live on deep in our hearts, minds and souls. May the Divine Presence embrace with warmth and love the souls of our brothers and sisters who, in death, commanded us to live and to remember.
May God grant us strength; may God bless us with peace.
© 2025 by Boaz D. Heilman
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