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MichaelMeckler.com: Blog: Shelf life of a tragedy

Shelf life of a tragedy

16 APRIL 2015

Holocaust commemorations are both necessary and disquieting. At yesterday evening's Columbus Board of Rabbis Yom HaShoah Community Program, speaker Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Rosenblatt discussed the concerns raised by such commemorations.

Without drawing too strong a parallel, he spoke of how his own family struggled to cope with the killing of his brother-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Twersky, in a terror attack last November at a synagogue in Jerusalem that garnered worldwide attention.

Rosenblatt expressed the concern of survivors and their families that later tragedies often overwrite previous ones, distorting or obliterating the memory of these events in the public's consciousness. Rosenblatt said the way to combat such distortions and obliterations — and the invidious comparisons of trying to place relative values on the degree of suffering — is to commemorate tragedy through becoming active agents of consolation and healing.

"We will be the voice of comfort and the call for decency," Rosenblatt said.

In that way, both historically cataclysmic events such as the Holocaust, as well as the individual acts of terrorism that sadly permeate our lives today, retain their power and purpose to future generations.

 

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