In memory - Yom HaShoah and Lucas

Tomorrow is eight weeks since Lucas died.

It's been Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day - here and my kids know too much. Sasha came home talking about "Nazim". He called Gabi one. We tried to explain you don't do that. Later tonight Gabi told him that if he ever met a Nazi, they would be a million times meaner than she is. He said that a Nazi would not be mean to him because he would dress in brown and the Nazi would think he was his child. Gabi said that would not work. I said we'll talk about this more when you are older.

Help.

In the class I was teaching before Lucas died, we were talking a lot about a line from Psalm 115, "the dead don't (won't?) praise God." We read a paper about two poems that reference this verse - you can find the paper here. I've written out the more recent of the two poems - it's a bit less stark.

XI. (Dead Men's Praise) from Scattered Psalms by Jacqueline Osherow

Yakov Glatstein already
used this verse in a poem,
translated, in that book,
(Radiant Jews, 1946)
Dead Men Don't Praise God

and you can see how, then,
it must have seemed that, for years,
this verse had festered in its psalm
waiting to reveal its acrid heart.

I don't blame him if he thought
all praise had ended

but I wonder if it's heartless
after only fifty years
to think – again – the praise has just begun:

the dead don't praise God
or the ones who go down to silence,
but we'll praise God
from now on forever
hallelujah –

I'm not suggesting that we think about it:
just sing it, during Hallel
at synagogue, the next new moon

and get in on a little
of its stubborn bravado
its delirious proof
of itself – hallelujah -


The Glatstein poem is about how "We received the Torah on Sinai / and in Lublin we gave it back."

That notion of a broken covenant seems very real to me. I was talking last week about how I thought Hashem and I had a deal - I buckle my kids in the car and they are safe - and how I can't accept that Lucas died, buckled in his car seat.

Thanks to all who acknowledge my struggles with faith these days while maintaining theirs.