Rabbi Judy Chessin

While the watchword “Never Again” is customarily and universally applied to Holocaust remembrance, the phrase is also increasingly appropriated as a universal rallying cry against all genocides.

And this shift from particular to universal mirrors a generational divide among Jews themselves as to how they experience, memorialize, and conceptualize the Holocaust, termed in Hebrew the Shoah.

This tension is being played out at Holocaust museums, educational centers and memorial services all over the world.

Those with first-hand knowledge of Nazi atrocities tend to focus exclusively on the Shoah itself and its particularistic, specifically Jewish messages.

By documenting the stories of both victims and survivors, they give voice to the very Jewish lives which Hitler tried to silence, find inspiration in the brave choices that Jews were called upon to make in impossible circumstances, and honor the actions of those who risked their lives to sanctify the very faith we take for granted.

Such an exclusively Jewish message of the Holocaust reminds us to ensure our own religious identity, as well as to remain vigilant in fighting antisemitism at home, in Israel, and in the larger worldwide community.

The entire mission of Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Holocaust, focuses exclusively and extensively on the Shoah and its implications in our world.

According to former Israeli Minister of Education Limor Livnat: “The Holocaust is a warning beacon not only for humanity, but primarily for…the children and descendants of the survivors. We bear the weighty task of conveying the message that ‘In every generation, each person must see himself as though he were a Holocaust survivor’…In the coming years, we will face another challenge: the survivor generation, the generation of living testimony, is slowly getting smaller, leaving us to face silent testimony… (For) Yad Vashem…there still is much work ahead. The growing waves of hatred and antisemitism must be repelled and Holocaust deniers must be denounced. We must find a way to give voice to the silent testimony and bequeath the legacy of the Holocaust and the rebirth of the Jewish Nation to our children, so they can pass it on to their children and their children’s children, ad infinitum.”

Yet many of these “children’s children” today are feeling compelled to cast off the image of the specifically Jewish suffering and victimhood during World War II.

These “new-Jews,” having grown up in a world where antisemitism has not functioned as part of their daily existence, and having lived only in a world with a viable (and they are told by the media, an oppressive) Jewish state, do not see their faith through the eyes of victimhood.

Now that the immediate danger for Jews has passed, they believe, the Holocaust compels them to focus instead on contemporary genocides: the suffering of Rwanda, the survivors in Cambodia, the ongoing murders in Darfur.

These Jews say that “Never Again” means that we must do our share to not allow future genocides wherever they take place. Jews, they argue, must throw off insular self-protectionism and pursue the Jewish ideal of justice, peace and tikun olam — repair of the world.

We see this attitude embraced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for example, which seeks not only to disseminate knowledge of the Holocaust per se but also to “reflect upon the moral and spiritual questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as (the visitors’) own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.”

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum strives “to broaden public understanding of the Holocaust and related issues, including those of contemporary significance.”

Thus, it also has a Genocide Prevention Task Force and a Committee on Conscience whose mandate is “to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and work to halt the acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity.”

This challenge to move from memory to action likewise appeals to the sensibilities of some modern Jews.

Arguably, both views of “Never Again” are needed. While the fear of Jewish survival and antisemitism may no longer resonate with our youths, their confidence overlooks the very real dangers that Jews face today: growing antisemitism in Europe, worldwide de-legitimization of Israel as the Jewish state and its right to defend itself, fanatical Islam, and the threat of a nuclear Iran.

Further, no generation of Jews who believed that antisemitism was laid to rest has ever been correct.

The causes and nature of antisemitism can easily become overlooked by a younger generation often unschooled in the sweep of Jewish history, and in the ever-new guises which unexpected antisemitism always seems to assume.

At the same time, without involvement in today’s greater world community, we Jews, likewise, run the risk of being the very “bystanders” we so often condemn during the Shoah.

Jewish philanthropist Edgar Bronfman applies Hillel’s famous adage to this generational rift. The survivors of the Holocaust remind us: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

That is, we Jews must look out for our own welfare. In response, a new, idealistic Jewish generation counter-poses: “But if I am only for myself, what am I?”

That is, doesn’t the very Judaism bequeathed to us from the generation that died demand us to become champions of justice and rescuers of the oppressed?

In today’s age of turmoil, division, and controversy, both clauses are required in fulfilling and maintaining our Jewish mission.

This Yom Hashoah, let each generation strive to learn from each other in the spirit of Hillel’s closing injunction: “If not now, when?”

Rabbi Judy Chessin is senior rabbi of Temple Beth Or in Washington Township.