The Melbourne Yom HaShoa commemoration is an important fixture in the calendar. Seeing that Melbourne is home to the largest population of Holocaust survivors, outside Israel, it would seem fitting that we have a well-attended evening.
There is a formula to the proceedings, with the testimony of a survivor being the most important part, I think, as well as the lighting of 6 candles by 6 survivors and a family member. There are children's choirs, representing the Jewish day schools, there is a speech from the Israeli ambassador and there is Kaddish recited, tehillim, El Melei Rachamim, the Partisans' Song, and we start with the Australian national anthem and end with HaTikvah. In our city with about 55,000 Jews, about 1,000+ come to the commemoration evening. It goes for about 2 hours.
This year there was focus on the story of the destruction of Hungarian Jewry, which took place from close to the end of the war, 1944, when the Nazis knew that were losing; yet they ploughed on ahead with the Final Solution. They were losing the war to the Allies, but they diverted time and resources to at least win their war on the Jews.
In something like 8 weeks, around half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered. Amidst the horrors of the Holocaust, this intensity of murder is a standout. While Jews were being liberated on one front, the Hungarians Jews were being obliterated on another.
I won't nit pick about the evening itself and about what could have been edited (but I will say that at last, the candle lighting was done electronically with a remote control clicker, or 'kvetcher' as I refer to such things, and we didn't have to sit on the edge of our seats in suspense, waiting to see if the match would strike or if the candle would stay lit etc. So that was an improvement.).
The schools represented by choirs or readings are Mt Scopus (Modern Orthodox) Yavneh (Dati Leumi- Zionist Orthodox) Sholem Aleichem (Yiddishist- they have a strong presence despite the small size of the school- the Bund is alive and well in Melbourne, the last stronghold) and I'm pretty sure the other schools are there too- King David (Reform) and Bialik (not sure how they are classified, but Jewish)... I think I got them all, I apologise to any I missed.
Beth Rivkah, Orthodox, Chabad, has a young girls' choir that sings at the beginning of the proceedings; their youth means that the laws of Tzniut are upheld, plus they sing alone so they aren't in a mixed choir; for years it has been thus and everyone is OK with it.
Yeshivah college boys, ditto Chabad, in the past have read Kapitel 20 of Tehillim in Hebrew and English and sometimes, Yiddish. (This year, inexplicably, it was Psalm 23, which doesn't really fit, and it was read by 2 girls, not by Yeshivah boys, so I don't know what happened there.)
But every year, among all the community groups, there is one that is missing; the Haredim.
It seems that Chabad is the only Haredi/Orthodox group that does the heavy lifting, or any lifting at all. The other Orthodox groups, I guess in Melbourne I'm talking about Adass Israel, are never there. This year it was particularly poignant, as there is a strong Hungarian history in the Adass congregation, with quite a few survivors' families making up the congregation. Another small school, such as Yesodei HaTorah, has been around long enough to field a choir, I would think; but also a no-show.
I need someone to explain this to me. It's not just in Melbourne either. On my last trip to Yad Vashem in 2012, the director of the English Language desk, Searle Brajtman, said that they were just starting to see Haredi couples and youths coming in to look around; it was as if they had just discovered the Shoa.
In 2011 I attended the incredibly moving Yom HaShoa commemoration in Jerusalem, and again, I don't remember seeing any Haredim there, in a crowd of about 2000 people.
I don't get this. I would think that the Shoa has meaning for all Jews, especially Ashkenazim, especially in Israel and Melbourne, with such strong historic links to Europe. Hitler did not differentiate between the 'frum' and the assimilated, or between the traditional or the intermarried or the converted, or full Jews or 'mischlings'. All were targeted, all were murdered.
Whatever it is that is stopping Haredim from attending the Yom HaShoa night in an official and visible way, it must be put aside. If they want to cloister themselves and live in a self-created shtetl in Melbourne, well, fine; but this is a night where community counts above all. After all, we have much more in common than we have differences. This deserves recognition.
We are all descendants of the 6 million martyrs and the surviving remnant of European Jewry.
May their memories be blessed- by all of us, in togetherness.
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