Spring 2002 Issue 214

The Holocaust - not just for the Adults

Holocaust Sunday January 27th 2002

Do you fancy doing the children’s talk? I found myself asking God how I could possibly talk about the Holocaust (the Shoah) to group of young teenagers and pre-teens in the early part of a service, while they were still in with the adults. I’d uncovered a few facts which I began with. For example, it would take the average 80 word-per-minute secretary typing for 8 hours per day, 5 days a week for a total of sixty-four days to type six million names! And she couldn’t possibly remember them all.

We can’t possibly know all of the six million. How many of us know more than six? Not many, I suspect. So we have to trust in El’Roi—the God Who sees (Genesis 16:13). We have to trust in the God Who spoke to His people 700 years before Yeshua was nailed to a tree saying, "You are mine, I have inscribed you upon the palms of My hands" (Isaiah 49:16). Here is God telling His poor, exiled, depressed, defeated people that He knows them. He knows who they are, where they have come from and what will happen to them. He knows what His plans for them are. But, most of all, He knows them.

Something else God says He will do for His people is cover them. So I took my kippah and explained a little of the significance of covering, of knowing that God has forgiven us, of seeing God’s Hand over us, outstretched all day long. Cherubim over the ark of Covenant, wings outstretched to wing. Yeshua wanting to gather the people of Yerushalayim to Himself. The cloud by day and fire by night (Numbers 9:15ff). All these precious images of the love of God.

Within an hour of the service I heard of the bomb in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street that had killed one and injured at least a hundred. On Holocaust Remembrance Day! Couldn’t we have a day off, already?

When the King in the wonderful and terrifying story of Hadassah (Esther) couldn’t sleep he decided to read one of the older, dusty volumes of the events of court and society. Before you could say, "Hava Na’Gila", arrests had been made and the original genocidical maniac had been stopped in his tracks. The Jewish people were so close to being wiped out. Purim, when we celebrate freedom from the oppressor, is remarkably significant since the Shoah, and following on since the renewed fighting in Jerusalem’s streets as well as these present times after the New York attacks.

In every generation, an enemy rises to annihilate the Jewish people. But when it’s over we send gifts. We eat, drink and are merry. Until the next time. No wonder we are charged to "Pray, for the peace of Jerusalem" (Psalm 133). Let us do so in the true meaning of the words, and "enquire, find out about" the peace—Shalom well-being and wholeness—of the City of Peace. Amen

Gerry Cohen, (BMJA member, Kent)