We Are More: Holocaust Education Week (Nov 1-7)

We are more
than an incomprehensible number
of individual lives lost,
and more
than a forest of family trees
who lost their limbs
or whose trunks were pulled out at the roots.
We are
schools from elementary through university,
a language with literature and theatre,
concepts of justice and compassion,
and laws and courts.
We are
mutual aid societies
that sit with the sick,
house the homeless,
and wait with women delivering the next generation.
We are
butchers and bakers,
shopkeepers and sellers,
merchants and middlemen,
and crafts people and farmers
in weekly market towns.

We are
worlds wiped out,
institutions erased,
languages almost gone unspoken,
songs never to be sung,
jokes never made.
We are
the smell of fresh baked bread
that sits on shelves, uneaten,
the crisp taste of vegetables, left to rot,
and the cries of those in sickness,
no longer comforted by a kind word.
We are
all the stars disappearing from the sky,
and the sky itself, going dark.

We are
a rich fabric of a society
woven from 3,000 years of history
and held together
by a covenant with God,
that has been ripped, torn, and burnt,
and yet,
still survives.
We are
those who carry on our shoulders
the way of life of our people.
We are
those who live on.

Please follow and like us: