Sinai or Auschwitz? Choosing the frame

We have just emerged from Pesach — zman herutenu, the “season of our freedom.” It’s a time when we don’t merely remember our exodus from Egypt but relive it. We engage in the telling, the re-enactment, the re-experiencing — not just of the story itself, but of its motions, its meaning, its sensory impact and our role in the continual rediscovery of freedom, both personal and collective.

We retell the story of overcoming Pharaoh’s tyranny to discover our own power. We navigate the complexities of Nature, of God, of human relationships, of tribal identity. Freedom, we learn, is not given—it is acquired through process, through transformation.

In every detail of the Pesach ritual, we see the crucial role of transmission: re-living, re-connecting, re-membering—literally putting the pieces back together. We do this so we can pass on not only the story but its values, its heartbeat, to the next generation.

The story is epic. The telling is unique. And what’s at stake is no less than everything: the transmission of life-affirming values:

• Intention
• Faith (Emunah)
• Hope
• Love
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Tenacity
• Essence
• And what can best be described as the inner compass that brings order to our world

And now, during the ceremonies and memory of Yom HaShoah, we are invited to carry those values with us.

Yom HaShoah is about honoring the dead. It is re-membering in the deepest sense—not forgetting, yes—but also integrating. Feeling how the Shoah has shaped us. How it is part of us. Here too, we are telling a story. How do we make sense of that story and bring it meaning? How do we transcend it to reaffirm the central value of life – despite the immense pain, sadness and bottomless grief?

In other words: how do we preserve the taste of freedom from Pesach?
How do we anchor remembrance in values that affirm life—especially for the sake of our children?
How do we tell the story in a way that grows them into mensches (i.e. Yiddish for good human beings in the truest sense—ethical, empathetic, grounded, and courageous)?

And how do we do this now—after a year and a half of war, with our hostages still in Gaza, with the toll of human loss, the trauma that lingers in every corner of our lives, and the phrase “never again” feeling like a memory itself?

A Personal Reflection

As a child of Holocaust survivors, I’ve lived with the weight of transgenerational trauma. And I have learned that precisely because of this wound—this deep and often wordless pain—the story must be life-affirming.

Healing comes with life. Healing is life. (And maybe, life is healing, too).

In this moment, the life we are affirming is the life that six million could not live.
It is life itself we are blessing—just as we do in the Kaddish, a prayer not of death, but of sanctifying life. Though said in mourning, the Kaddish is a prayer of praise. It affirms life and the sacredness of existence, even in the face of loss.

It is this story—a story of choosing life, again and again—that we must carry forward, from generation to generation.

 In a way, from Sinai to Auschwitz and beyond, this is the lesson I hold onto: to choose life, and to remember the lives—not only the deaths—of those we’ve lost. Our six million brothers and sisters continue to teach us, in both life and death. May their memories be a blessing.

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Written with Emanuelle Girsowicz