Holocaust Remembrance Day Is Canceled
Finding support in unlikely places
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
Within days of October 7, a flood of antisemitism flashed across the planet, like a tsunami, all the way to where I live in the Pacific Northwest. Since then, the stories of Jew-hatred in the U.S. have only become weirder. Antisemitic flyers tainted with rat poison found outside Chicago, for example.
The rising tide of hatred came up in conversation the other day, as I shared a sushi lunch with Melinda, a non-Jewish friend.
“Before the newest waves of hate crimes, I’d been thinking about nailing a mezuzah to my front doorframe,” I said, as we watched salmon chug by on a conveyor belt. I lowered my voice. “I’m still thinking about it. But would that be safe?”
Melinda’s response surprised me.
“Then I’ll put one up, too,” she said. I was touched she’d stand by me.
***
My son, who lives in a suburb of Chicago, texts me: The city council is having hearings where people are claiming they saw rabbis sneaking out of sewer manholes covered in blood.
I shudder, reminded of the medieval claims of blood libel—that Jews drank the blood of Christian children on their holidays. I wonder: How do you fight insanity without becoming insane yourself? And how much longer will we have to?
***
Trying to sleep, memories of my trip to Poland flash before my eyes. A few years ago, I visited the concentration camps with about a dozen Holocaust educators. The trip leader was Naomi, a tiny woman in her late 80s with a thick Hungarian accent. On a cloudy day, my fellow travelers and I drew in a tight circle around her on the grounds of Auschwitz. We stood at the very spot where she had been separated from her mother and sister.
“To the left,” Naomi raised a frail arm and pointed down the railroad tracks. “This is vere my mother and sister were sent to zeir deaths.” Then she raised her right hand and gestured to where she was sent to work the hard soil. Just then, a group of teeangers raced by us, tossing jokes back and forth in German. The wind whipped their hair into their eyes.
Now, in my dark night of the soul, the sound of their laughter haunts me. I think about those young people and I wonder: Are they in college now? Is world history taught there? Have they learned to respect that holy ground?
If not, how are they to know that all life is sacred?
***
A few days later, my son texts again. The high school made the German Club students cancel Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Has the murder of Jews become fodder for cancel culture?
I haven’t heard from my son in over a week. My son is visibly Jewish: he moves through the world with a yarmulke on his head and tzitzit strings hanging from beneath his shirt. I tell myself that he’s just been too busy with work and family to be in touch. I try not to fret, but of course, I don’t succeed.
I am American. I am Jewish. And I am a mother. As a simple week of busyness, not bombs, threatens to topple my sanity, I think about what it would be like to be the mother of a soldier. As the threat to our existence here in the U.S. becomes less hypothetical, I feel for the mothers all around the world who are living through daily bombings.
***
It’s Friday night. My husband and I have invited some non-Jewish friends over for their first Shabbat. I admire Cindy, the wife, who grows food for the poor on church property. Her hands are often stained with dirt. Cindy knows how to sanctify the ground.
I consider giving her a pair of Shabbat candlesticks. I think of Melinda, who offered to put up a mezuzah. Now I imagine windows across the U.S. lighting up with candles on Friday night: Jews and Christians united against antisemitism. If things got really ugly, our enemies would be confused about where the “real” Jews were.
I power off my phone and set out our tall candlesticks, fashioned from limestone building blocks mined in Israel. Beautiful. But something is missing. I excuse myself to look for another candle holder, and return with a votive of swirled glass. I light all three. The middle one illuminates limestone arms raised to heaven in prayer.
My husband looks at me with questioning eyes. Usually, we welcome the Sabbath Bride with a single set of candlesticks.
“It’s for the mothers,” I say, as much to G-d as to him. “And for those who can no longer pray.”
I turn my attention back to our guests.
“What if you were to light Shabbat candles on Friday nights?” I ask. I tell them about my plan. Cindy nods.
“As you know, I have two sons,” she says. “I understand doing whatever it takes to keep your people safe.”
She vows to tell other mothers.
I dig out a box of Shabbat candles from a drawer. When I hand them to her, my fingers brush hers, and I feel a spark of hope—something I haven’t felt in a while.
Bliss Goldstein is the 2022 CALYX Journal winner of the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, the LA Times, and Spider Magazine. She taught writing at Western Washington University, and has an MLA degree from Stanford University, where she co-founded the journal “Tangents.”
This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.
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In the 1980's I worked with a Jewish comrade on the publication of feminist journal. We all wrote for the paper, taking turns writing the editorial comments for our monthly publication "Big Mama Rag". When my friend decided to research antisemitism online, she was burdened with the biggest result she found - that lots of people still wanted to kill Jewish people outright. Hatred can be so easy, and resistance and love the hardest work. Bliss's article reminds me of all the work still to be done...and yes finding ways to create signals of safe places as we walk down the street is critical, and can be done in many ways.
Thanks for the love.