Q:
Why have Yom Hashoah commemorations only caught on to a limited extent both among the secular American Jews and the Orthodox Jews?
A:
The question is about Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and why it hasn’t spread.
Now, it hasn’t spread among the general populace because the general populace is so assimilated, so identified with the gentiles, that they don’t care. That’s the plain truth. They think it’s so remote from them. Let’s say, the present generation that developed since 1945 – it’s already thirty five years and so this new generation doesn’t give a hoot about the Holocaust. Their whole worry is about television, about immorality. That’s in their minds. Perhaps making a living too. Maybe. I’m not so sure about that. And so they don’t identify with Jewish problems at all. And the old generation also has been lost in America. Their Jewish consciousness is pretty weak.
Why it didn’t catch on among the Orthodox, there’s a different reason for that. Orthodox Jews have no sympathy for those who are conducting Holocaust ceremonies because they’re atheists. If you see the names of all the leaders who make symposiums of the Holocaust, they’re people who don’t believe in the Borei and don’t believe in the Torah. So how can we take part in viewing any part of our history from the perspective of atheism?
We understand that Hakadosh Baruch Hu did whatever He did for His purposes and to leave Hashem out of a discussion of a very important episode of history is to us ridiculous. And therefore we have no interest in their Holocaust studies and their Holocaust memorials. It’s the same as if gentiles came together to talk about some phase of our history. They don’t understand it. And these Jews talk about it like gentiles do.
TAPE # 312 (April 24, 1980)
