The Blogs: When God Was Silent: Yom HaShoah and October 7th

Yom HaShoah, which falls this Thursday, is not merely a date on the Jewish calendar. It is a sacred rupture in time—a moment when the collective soul of a people pauses to scream, weep, and remember. It is a day when silence is deafening. The absence of divine intervention, the absence of humanity, the absence of answers. The flames of Auschwitz still flicker in our memory, the cries of children from the ghettos echo across generations, and the silence—especially the silence of God—haunts us.

As Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and moral witness to the 20th century. In his book Legends of Time, he writes:

“Perhaps someday someone will explain how, on the level of man, Auschwitz was possible, but on the level of God, it will forever remain the most disturbing of mysteries.”

These are not words of blasphemy. These are sacred protests—tears within the covenant. They are not denials of faith, but its deepest expression: the audacity to demand an answer from Heaven.

The Holocaust: When the Sea Did Not Split

Judaism is a faith of miracles. We tell stories of seas that split, plagues that shattered empires, and a nation reborn in six days in 1967. We sing of redemption at the Seder and celebrate our people’s improbable victories.

But Yom HaShoah compels us to confront the other side of the sacred coin: the silence.

The Holocaust was not merely suffering—it was the collapse of the miraculous. The trains rolled on time. The ovens never failed. The heavens were still.

Where was the God of the Exodus?

Where was the man made in God’s image?

Where were we?

The answers elude us. All we have is memory, mourning, and the sacred responsibility to keep the questions alive.

October 7: A Pain That Feels Familiar

In the shadow of October 7, 2023, Yom HaShoah feels more piercing than ever. The pain is no longer just historical—it is present, raw, and still bleeding.

The horrors of that day did not occur in exile. They happened in our sovereign homeland. We were not defenceless. We had walls, intelligence networks, and weapons. And still, evil erupted with a vengeance we thought we had prepared for.

This was not just an external failure—it was internal. It was betrayal from within and a collapse of trust. October 7 is a day impossible to fathom. The ground beneath us once again gave way.

When the Masks Fall: Echoes of Sighet, Shadows of October 7th

There are moments in Jewish history when the masks fall and reveal the eternal truth: that beneath the surface of civility, ancient hatreds still dwell.

Elie Wiesel’s return to his home town of Sighet decades after the war revealed an unbearable absence. No Jewish shops. No shuls. No faces from his childhood. A town that had erased its past and moved on.

It is a wound that feels hauntingly familiar.

October 8^th unleashed a wave of Jewish and Israeli hatred which has not ceased.

The Spring of 1944: When Everything Changed

For the Jews of Hungary, the illusion of safety persisted longer than elsewhere. But on March 19, 1944, with the Nazi invasion under Operation Margarethe, the veil was torn.

Passover came. And still, the Jews hoped. Still, they whispered: “It will pass.” But it didn’t.

One month later, the roundups began. And with terrifying speed, Jewish life was erased.

The Fatal Mistake: Misreading the Threat

They believed they were part of the fabric of Sighet Society. Indispensable. Integrated.

But the dream of normalcy was shattered. Neighbours turned cold and took advantage of the situation. Authorities were only to obey orders to steal Jewish property and belongings. The Jews misread the signs. They failed to see the evil, mistook danger for inconvenience.

And when the gates of Auschwitz opened, it was too late.

Eichmann’s Machine: From Occupation to Annihilation

Adolf Eichmann oversaw the deportation of over 437,000 Hungarian Jews in just eight weeks.

Sighet was stripped of its Jewish soul. The synagogues, schools, and homes were emptied. The world turned away. The angels were silent. And the Jews were gone.

Our October 7th

Reading Wiesel’s memories today is no longer only an exercise in historical reflection. It is a fulfilment of prophecy. October 7 was a mask-ripping moment.

And the slogans that followed—chanted on campuses, in the UN, parliaments, on social media—were not new. They were echoes.

“Never Again” became a question mark.

Ancient Hatreds, Ancient Cries, News call of murder in the street

“Itbah al-Yahud” (“Slaughter the Jews”) and “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud” (“Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews”) are genocidal slogans chanted openly at rallies and protests, especially since October 7, 2023.
These chants are not demands for political rights; they are calls for mass murder and extermination.

The Battle of Khaybar in 629 CE was led by Muhammad, the founder of Islam, against the Jewish tribes of Khaybar in the Arabian Peninsula.

After the Muslim forces conquered Khaybar:

The Jewish men were massacred,
The Jewish women were raped,
The survivors — women and children — were enslaved,
Jewish homes and property were looted and burned.
Muhammad himself took one of the Jewish captives, Safiyya bint Huyayy, as part of the spoils of war.

Today, when protesters chant “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews,” they are glorifying massacre, rape, theft, and enslavement — not peaceful coexistence.

Allowing these slogans under the guise of “free speech” is a betrayal of civilisation.
International law, including the Genocide Convention, classifies incitement to genocide as a crime, not protected speech.

Hate must never be accepted as political discourse.
Silence in the face of such hatred is complicity.

And they are tolerated—justified by intellectuals, parroted by the powerful, and protected under the guise of free speech.

How did we reach this point?

The Ancient Blindness

Israel today builds, we contribute, we heal, we write symphonies and launch start-ups.

But the covenant of hate of the Jews and now its Nation state, the memory, the difference—it all remains.

And when the storm comes, we are reminded again: the Jew is never just a citizen. He is history’s lightning rod.

Blindness to this cycle is not just political; it is spiritual. It is the failure to see the deeper hatred beneath the mask of justice.

The Mirage of Diplomacy

Diplomats continue to shake hands with murderers.

Deals are struck with those who glorify the death of Jews.

Appeasement is back in fashion. Truth is negotiable. And peace is a press release away.

But real peace cannot be built on illusions. The Shoah taught us that. October 7 reinforced it.

A Different Kind of Hope

It is hard to have hope, despairing of humanity’s failure in the Holocaust and their reaction on October 8th.

What hope is there for the future? Our People remain divided, surrounded by enemies and their supporters around the world against the one little Jewish State.

Because Jewish hope is not naive, it is not built on applause or acceptance.

It is defiance. It is the hope of the eternal people of the book.

Hope is not lighting candles in Auschwitz, or singing Am Yisrael Chai in the Kotel, or burying the dead.

Hope is a stubborn refusal to die, and to build again

Hope is memory, weaponised against forgetting.

Hope is staying strong in this war against Evil.

The Opposite of Miracle

The opposite of a miracle is not a failure. It is abandonment.

It is screaming into the void and hearing nothing.

It is the death of children, met with shrugs and press releases.

But even there, in that silence, we survived.

Faith in the Shadow of Absence

Some still whispered the Shema in the gas chambers.

Some still buried their children and rose the next day.

Some still dream, still teach, still marry, still sing.

As Shir HaShirim says:

“I sought him, but I found him not. I called, and He gave no answer.” (5:6)

But the Song of Songs ends in reunion, not despair. Love remains. The covenant holds.

Even when God hides, the Jew remembers.

Yom HaShoah: A Sacred Reckoning

Yom HaShoah is not just a memorial.

It is a sacred reckoning:

With God’s silence.
With man’s cruelty.
With our obligation to ensure that “Never Again” is not an empty phrase.

It is the day we cry out from the ashes—not to be victims, but to be witnesses. Warriors of memory. Guardians of the covenant.

Conclusion: The Miracle of Continuity

There are days of splitting seas.
There are days of smoking chimneys.
And there are days like today, when we remember that to survive, believe, and sing again is the greatest miracle of all.

We carry the scars. But we also carry the fire.

This Yom HaShoah, we do not only mourn what was lost.

We honour what still lives: