Yom Hashoah evokes traumatic and heartbreaking sounds of the darkest chapter in our people’s history. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the broken windows of storefronts on Kristallnacht. The shattering of glass in synagogues and in homes. I can hear the crackling of paper, the reams of holy words burning in shuls, of Torah scrolls being consumed, licked up by flames. I can hear the cries of fathers being separated from their children. The gasps of women who watched their homes being destroyed. I can hear the terror of cattle cars, the silence of a Europe emptied of its Jewish life, and the unimaginable sounds of the camps, sounds that no human being should ever have to hear. And if I listen closely, I can hear the moments of heroism by those who sacrificed their lives and those who continued to live. I can hear the “Zog Nit Keyn Mol,” the “Partisan’s Song,” hummed beneath barbed wire. The whispered prayers of the pious and the defiant breath of those who had the will to resist, in the forests, in the ghettos, and in the quiet courage of simply surviving another day.
In Judaism, sound is central to some of our most foundational rituals. It is the shofar, the sounding of the ram’s horn, that ushers in for us varying emotions. On one hand, the shofar blasts are meant to sound like a deep and painful cry, perhaps the cry of death and destruction that we as a people have experienced throughout our history. The sounds of sobbing are a symbol of the hurt and pain that each of us, as individuals and as a community, carries. But the shofar is also meant to evoke in us a sense of redemption. It is a sound that conveys triumph, and so the shofar was sounded at the end of a battle to signify victory. In that moment of glory, it becomes a cry of joy and hope for the future. A sound that will one day usher in peace and joy for all eternity.
The sound of the shofar recalls the sounds of the past, the sounds of brokenness and destruction, as well as the sounds of hope for the future, washing over us all at once. It is a sound of death intertwined with the resounding sound of life.
On this Yom Hashoah, let us carry both. Let us carry the weight of the six million, their names, their voices, their songs, and even their laughter. Let us also carry the responsibility that comes with remembrance. Memory is not passive; it is a call to stand against hatred and antisemitism wherever it rises. It calls us to see the humanity in every person. It calls us to build a world worthy of those we have lost.
Let us hear the shofar as a call to each of us to live our lives in harmony, attempting to perpetuate the memory of all those who no longer stand with us. May their memory be a blessing, and may their absence be the very thing that compels us, always, to choose life.
