Holocaust Remembrance Day: The Startup Nation Remembers. Israel Innovation Repairs

Today, on Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), hundreds of Israeli entrepreneurs, innovators, researchers and the like, are filing into offices and co-work spaces across Israel, like mine here in Ra’anana, called WOPA (the welaunch HQ in Israel). And as they walk in the doors they will likely see Holocaust memorials like the one featured in the above picture (taken in my lobby).

Later in the day these men and women, like Israelis across the country and Jews across the world, will stop for a few moments, stand with heads bowed in silence in front of such memorials and listen as the air raid sirens wail across the country. They will remember their family, their forebearers and their people who perished in the Holocaust. And they will fulfill the generational charge to “Never Forget,” committing to do their part to make sure such an atrocity never happens again – “Never Again.”

This, however, is only one way these men and women pay tribute to the victims. Another way happens after the sirens end. These same men and women pay their respects through their work of Tikun Olam – repairing a broken world, literally.

Some of these innovators are developing technologies to provide us safer food and cleaner water.

Others are researching ways to cure cancer or root out disease before it begins.

And many are creating innovations to ease suffering, further healing and save lives.

These entrepreneurs, scientists and innovators, the great-grandchildren, family and descendants of Holocaust victims, are redeeming their ancestors through Tech-un Olam – providing humankind with world transforming, earth replenishing, life sustaining innovations and technologies. They are transforming darkness into light, curses into blessings and the horrors of the Holocaust into the hope of humanity.

This is how we all should pay tribute to those who came before us. We should always look backwards and remember.

And this is how each of us can redeem those who were wronged, robbed of life and taken from us too soon. We should look forward and commit, each in our own way, to right those wrongs and do our part in repairing the world.

This is how we will ensure that never again will any generation have to say, “Never Again”.

God bless all the souls of those who perished in the Holocaust. May God continue to protect all those who continue to work to make sure that it never happens again.

Rabbi Baruch HaLevi
www.welaunch.org

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