The first Yom HaShoah of the second Trump administration

I grew up in a home of survivors. My parents survived the Holocaust, and the memories of their experiences and the loved ones lost were ever present.

As strong as those memories were, they did not overwhelm us. My parents’ tales were mostly of survival, not grief. They were stories of arriving to America, embraced by family in New York City, and building community in Los Angeles.

On Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Day, we would light a memorial candle and occasionally attend a remembrance ceremony at our synagogue. But we did not mourn for long, because we felt safe. We did not live in fear, because we lived in the land of freedom and possibility.

My parents instilled in me a spirit of determination and hope. But today, on this first Yom HaShoah since the election of Donald Trump to his second term, it is harder to conjure that spirit; it is harder to sustain a sense of hope.

On this Yom HaShoah, there is fear in the air.

We fear for our safety as we watch officials of our government raise their arms in Nazi-like salutes and meet with neo-Nazis in Germany.

We fear for our security, as markets tumble, prescription costs are inflated, and Social Security is threatened.

We fear for our children and families, as educational institutions are undermined and medical research is slashed.

We fear for our democracy, as constitutionally-guaranteed rights are trampled, due process is ignored, and judicial rulings are flouted.

We fear for our community because we recognize that in unstable times like these, Jews become scapegoats and targets for extremists searching for someone to blame.

It is hard to maintain hope in the face of these fears. They feed a narrative of negativity and narrow our focus on the dangers, not the solutions.

But losing hope should be our greatest fear.

Losing hope feeds the isolation and paralysis that authoritarians like President Trump rely on to silence their opposition. It enables the very threats to our safety, security, and stability that we fear.

Losing hope allows authoritarians to exploit fear in service of their extreme agendas, as the president does when he uses Jewish safety as a pretext for slashing university funding, deporting students without legal cause, and intimidating law firms.

Losing hope leads some people to despair and withdraw, perhaps even leave their homes in search of a place where they can find greater safety and freedom.

Losing hope was never an option in my family. For my mother in Auschwitz, it was a common-sense strategy for daily survival. For my father, it was a sacred responsibility. During the last year of World War II, he spent his days hiding in Budapest and his nights guiding Jews through a dangerous network to Bucharest, then Bulgaria, and finally to Palestine. He could have escaped, but he always went back.

My parents lived in far more dangerous times than these. They took risks I can barely comprehend. But there are still risks to be taken and strategies to be developed to confront today’s dangers.

Like the leaders of over 200 colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we must stand firm against threats to defund higher education.

Like many state governments, labor unions, nonprofit advocacy groups, and legal organizations, we must bring the Trump administration to court over its deportations, government dismissals, and other executive actions.

Like Governor Janet Mills of Maine, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, or Congressman Don Bacon of Nebraska, we must challenge the president when he overreaches his authority on issues ranging from transgender rights to press freedom to tariffs.

Like local and national grassroots organizations such as Indivisible, we must mobilize in the streets to oppose policies that erode the rights of Americans across political, economic, racial, gender, and age spectrums.

Like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Council of Jewish Women, HIAS, and the leading institutions of Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements, we must reject the false dichotomy President Trump manufactures between Jewish safety and democratic principles.

This is a time to let our memories inspire us to action. We can never forget, but we can choose what to remember. And we can choose to hope.

“Because I remember, I despair,” Elie Wiesel proclaimed in his Nobel Lecture. And he continued: “Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope.”