unexpected companions

I’m falling in love with the Jewish people. At least with the writings I’ve devoured recently. I feel a community, an honestly, a ‘coming along with’ in the voices of these authors. The horrors and brutality of the Holocaust (to them Shoah) color their writing with unapologetic honesty. Here I find a sort of brotherhood in rejection of the ‘easy answers.’

I do not find comfort in the suffering of this people, my spiritual ancestors. Today, their suffering slices through me like white hot metal. I refuse to turn away. Oh, God, how could you?

My “brothers in suffering” offer no justification for their abandonment by God. They reject all attempts to insist that God always acts justly. How could anyone even propose such a thing to a child who was incinerated in a death camp or to a father who survived his wife and children? I would hope no one would dare but the insistent rejection by these who are telling their story tells me someone clearly has.

There are no easy answers. Sometimes there are NO EXPLAINATIONS. Sometimes it has to be ok to believe God has acted unjustly, whether it be true or not. Deep, horrific suffering cannot be explained away, minimized or smoothed over. Sometimes God’s action, or inaction sucks and doesn’t make any sense.

To these people who suffered inhuman atrocities I am intensely and achingly grateful. I am grateful for their painful honestly that I’m certain has heaped yet more cost onto a mountain of agony. To speak about a truth the world so desperately wants to forget. To feel as if their agony and history is a blip on everyone else’s happy and prosperous life. I know a touch of this, for them I feel an ever deepening love.