Sadly, even the Holocaust can only be remembered for so long. We don't know when that expiration date will be, but it will happen. If we ignore it, the memory will become dull and fade away. Only a year ago, CNN reported on a survey that showed that one out of five Europeans ages 20-40 – one-fifth of the young population on the continent on which the Holocaust took place – had never heard of it.
In Israel, which rose out of the ashes of the tragedy and swore "Never Again," it's hard to imagine such a horrifying reality, but even here, the annual memorial ceremony that shapes a major part of our identity rests mainly on the generation of survivors, the last of whom are still alive. But what will happen 20, 50, or 100 years from now, when even their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who heard their testimony, aren't here anymore? Will we all remember? What will we remember?
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The Holocaust was a terrible, formative event – one of the biggest ones that influenced the lives of the Jewish people, and can be included in the list that includes: Exodus, Mount Sinai, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the Diaspora.
We remember all these in the Jewish manner: A man must see himself " As if he'd left Egypt, as if we were there when the Temple was destroyed as if we ourselves had received the Torah, as if we had been part of the event. We demand of ourselves that we live the past in the present and take part in it here and now, thereby making it part of our ongoing story."
The late Prime Minister Menachem Begin once suggested connecting Holocaust Memorial Day to the line of Jewish religious memorial days by marking it on the 9th of the Hebrew calendar month of Av. Begin wanted all Jews to imagine themselves having been there, in the terror of the Holocaust.
The trips Israeli students take to Poland, for example, meet that demand to a large extent. Hundreds of thousands who visited experienced that spirit of memory, but it is not enough. Textbooks, films, trips, filmed testimonies – none of these are enough in and of themselves to replace the actual memories and ensure that they are retained forever.
In order for us to continue telling the story of the Holocaust every year, even 100 or 200 years from now, to illustrate the culture of hatred, racism, and the industry of death – as well as the silence and indifference that allowed it to exist – we need to anchor the Holocaust in Jewish memory through rituals that are essentially similar to the ones that allow us to commemorate the Exodus or the destruction of the Temple.
It won't happen in a day, but at some point, we need to start working on a codified ritual and book that tells the story of the Holocaust – like the Passover Haggada – that will be read aloud in every home. Perhaps there should even be a scroll, like the Book of Lamentations or the Book of Esther, that is read in public.
A few such attempts have been made in the last few years, but mostly by individuals or special interest groups, rather than a multi-system effort in which rabbis, writers, poets, intellectuals, the public, and survivors from all sectors of the Jewish people took part.
This is a long-term assignment, but anyone who wants to make sure that "we will never forget" applies not only to us and our immediate descendants but also to our descendants and thereby becomes part of the Jewish obligation to remember centuries from now, must help build memorial ceremonies and rituals that will become a part of Jewish life. Just like the major events of the distant past.
