We Are All One Family

Every kid in Israel will come home from school today with a Ner neshama, a yahrzeit candle- with the name of a Holocaust victim on its side. They are instructed to light them tonight when Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day begins, to remember a random victim of the shoah.

My son was shocked when he picked up a candle at random and looked at the name.

“Michael Lankin.”

He called me hysterical, “Ima! I found more family!”

I looked him up in the Yad Vashem database. He lived and died in Vilna, had two small children and a wife named Zelda. He was killed when he was 30 years old.

Lankin isn’t a very common name. There is a good chance that Michael Lankin was indeed a cousin or relative. What are the odds that it was his name that his (maybe) distant cousin picked out to take home, and remember?

The truth is, these days, Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, are deeply personal.

Because who we are mourning, is family.

Whether the family is distantly related, closely related, or we all knew each other at Mount Sinai- it doesn’t matter.

Every single Jew is a member of our Jewish family.

We are all brothers and sisters.

***

This year’s Yom Hashoah is extremely painful to hold space for.

We are already deep in a painful chapter of Jewish history, and it hurts to look back as if we aren’t feeling the shadows of all that loss every day.

One of the most powerful lessons from the Shoah, is that every single Jew matters.

We cannot afford for the world to think that our blood is cheap, because they will spend every last drop.

We are all one family- and you fight till your family comes home.

We have hostages in Gaza that we are waiting for every moment.

We are mourning too many deaths in this war.

But one thing is clear- “Never again is Now” is not just a slogan.

It has become clear, from the pain of past and the present, that we, Jewish people, need a safe place to always come home to.

Am Yisrael Chai.