Lean In: A Reflection for Yom HaShoah

In August 2022, I traveled to Poland on a study trip. It was a challenging experience—emotionally exhausting and spiritually heavy. As someone whose family comes from Morocco, I don’t have personal family history rooted in the Holocaust. My ancestors lived outside of Europe and, by a stroke of historical luck, were spared the atrocities that befell so many of our people. But standing on the grounds of former concentration camps, walking through the remnants of once-thriving Jewish towns, and bearing witness to the scale of destruction—it became painfully clear: this history is mine. It is ours. It belongs to every Jew, regardless of where our families lived or how directly we were affected. Because the Holocaust was not just a European Jewish tragedy—it was a Jewish tragedy.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago, when I visited Buenos Aires and Córdoba, Argentina—my husband’s home country. His Jewish story is very different from mine. His great-grandparents fled Ukraine at the turn of the 20th century, escaping pogroms and rising antisemitism. Like so many others, they rebuilt their lives in a new country. He was raised in a Jewish community shaped not only by immigration, but by the trauma and memory of the Holocaust. Survivors were part of his upbringing—not distant figures in textbooks, but elders in the synagogue, neighbors in the community, and voices around the Shabbat table.

We spent Shabbat at Lamroth Hakol, his family’s synagogue and community center. It was founded in 1944 by German-Jewish refugees fleeing the Shoah. The name, Lamroth Hakol—“Despite Everything, Community”—captured the essence of what we experienced. Security was extremely tight—more intense than what I’ve seen at many North American Jewish institutions. But once inside, it was vibrant, joyful, deeply connected. There was music, prayer, laughter, and an unmistakable energy of belonging.

What struck me most was this: in the face of antisemitism, exclusion, and hate, Jews in this community didn’t hide. They leaned in. They leaned into one another. They built stronger, more intentional, more joyful communities. They understood, perhaps instinctively, that resilience doesn’t come from retreat—it comes from relationship.

And that’s what I carry with me this Yom HaShoah.

As we remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and the countless lives shattered in its wake, we also honor those who lived—who chose, despite everything, to keep building. We honor the communities that have kept our stories alive. And we recognize that our greatest act of defiance in the face of hate is to come together—to lean in.

Let us not allow memory to be only solemn. Let it also be a call to action: to gather, to rebuild, to connect. In memory of those who were lost, and in honor of those who survived, we lean in—together.