Yom Hashoa, a world that still exists
Standing by a screen,
Shadowed by the triangular wall
Of Yad Vashems pillars, a video compilation of pre-war Europe plays.
Rabbis with curled Payos, little boys in Newsboy caps, smiling shyly at the camera, girls in dark braids and dresses with white collars hiding behind their hands, women with baskets, and babies. So many babies.
The screen a pyramid,
A Tear drop, a glimpse, a speck, into a world that no longer exists, says the tour guide
Walk through the museum, and you'll see a world that no longer exists. These people, these Jews, these customs, this way of dress, faded away like vapor. Holidays and prayers and teffilin, mutated into numbers on a tattooed arm, piles and piles of shoes in a warehouse, stolen wedding rings and rusted cattle cars.
This world no longer exists, the path to the Shtetel has been blown away by the wind, and there is a Ukrainian town built on top of its bones. We can not pronounce the name of that Rabbi or that little girl with ribbons in her hair, they are relics of the past, a story we tell our children, their faces live behind a museum displays glass.
My world is not a screen shadowed by a triangular wall. My world is not a video compilation along a museums pillars. Once, my husband and I walked together along the beach, he was wearing his Kappata and black hat, I wore a long dress and Tichel. A man called out to us in amazement, couldn't take his eyes off of us. His stare and laugh asking us, surely this is a movie, are you actors from a local showing of Fiddler on the roof, surely you are not from here.
My life is a screen pyramid,
a Tear drop, a glimpse, a speck, into a world that exists. There are still Rabbis with curled Payos, little boys who wear Newsboy caps, girls in dark braids and dresses with white collars, and women with baskets, and strollers and grocery bags, and babies. So many babies.
The path to the Shtetel was packed beneath barrack floor boards, and boarded onto ships to Israel and America before it could be blown away by the wind, no matter that there is a Ukrainian town built on top of its bones. There are hundreds of Jews with the same name of that Rabbi or that little girl with ribbons in her hair, they are alive, not a story we tell our children, they shatter the museum glass, refuse to be trapped there, they are not relics of the past.
The first time I went to the mivkah before my wedding, I shook so hard, the attendant needed to help me down the steps. I was walking into the ritual that has bathed every Jewish woman who came before me, and I felt every single one of them with me in that moment.
My husband wraps himself into his Tallis everyday, and escapes into a world of men davening and singing around his shoulders, a tent of song that envelopes all of them, through the same tunes and words, and for that moment they are not separated by centuries.