I can't believe a Rabbi wrote this

[sonia]

"The higher truth is that our experiences are absolutely fitting for each of us." I thought the Holocaust would prevent any Jew from letting that pass their lips, much less committing it to writing in a "spiritual" book.

I find it personally, viscerally offensive. I can't live in a world where I chose or deserved, at any level, the terrible things that were done to me. Not as part of the Holocaust, but perhaps as a sort of backwash from it, since I was raised by people directly affected by it.

How could a Rabbi say that, one old enough that he might have been alive during the Holocaust? In a chapter about compassion and empathy, no less. Look someone in the eye and say that, someone with a number tattooed on them. Look at a photo of skeletal people rescued from a death camp and say that. Look at someone raped as a child and say that.

I was just writing with my aunt about her aunts and uncles, and she wrote, this one and this one and that one were assassinated in the Holocaust. (In Spanish.) They couldn't possibly have deserved that. Nor did my aunt deserve to grow up without extended family around her.

Comments

[sonia]

Everything you wrote makes lots of sense to me, and is a good match for how I approach this stuff. Thanks for putting it all so clearly!