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Thursday, June 3, 2010

Lesson Six: When Night Will Shine Like Day

Dear Student,

In this lesson, we bring our course full circle. We started with the question of, “Where was G-d in the Holocaust?” In this lesson, we ask “Where was man?” For if the Holocaust tries our faith in G-d, it also tries our faith human civilization.

The Holocaust showed us a world in which the most culturally and scientifically advanced society on earth used its sophistication to engineer the most efficient genocidal program the world had ever known. The most assimilated Jewish community of the time found that their participation did not protect them from hatred. And while not everyone was a murderer, the vast majority of people were apathetic bystanders who allowed the evil to go unchecked.

And yet, amidst this horror, there were some beacons of light. An estimated two million righteous gentiles sacrificed their own safety and well-being to stand up to evil and to save Jews even at risk to their own lives. Often, these courageous individuals were poor and uneducated. Yet their moral sense was impeccable.

Can we prevent human progress from falling prey to moral bankruptcy? Is it possible to retain faith in the future, and to believe in a brighter tomorrow? What must we do to create a world in which no more holocausts can happen?

Please join us for Lesson Six as we explore what it means to truly move beyond “never again.”

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