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Yom HaShoah: The World We are Given

4/17/2012

 
A few weeks ago, I had this conversation with my 13-year-old daughter who was reading Elie Wiesel's Night for a school assignment. I was driving her home with her in the back seat.

I said, "You know, it's not a subject I like to talk about."

And she said, "I know."
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"It's hard for me not to take it personally, especially when I think about my grandfather and how his sisters were murdered."


There is a long pause.


"But, you know, if it had not been, neither you nor I would ever have been born. My mother would have stayed in France. She would have grown up there and my parents would never have met. And there is no knowing what the world today would be like. Is it possible to wish for one's own non-existence?"


She doesn't answer.


"You bet it is."


I think about this as we drive over the South Branch of the St. Lucie River, almost home.
"But we live in the world we are given, not the world we wish for."


In the rearview mirror, I see her reading her book.
Wendy Lebowitz
4/17/2012 03:43:05 pm

Jeff,
I had these discussions with my mom and grandmother and uncle -- over and over, throughout my childhood, trying to understand their journeys, and my siblings' and cousins' lives as one of the results. My grandparents were thrilled, after leaving Europe, to have an American born child, the uncle only a decade older than I. I have come to believe in possibility . . . Remembering.

Reb Rachel link
4/18/2012 02:43:05 am

Thank you for this understated and powerful post.

Christina Kelly-Whitney
4/20/2012 05:08:52 am

Thanks Jeff for sharing this powerful and moving moment with all of us.
L'shalom.

Irma Smith
4/26/2012 01:40:24 pm

Night = is a powerful book. I read it after I had seen Elie Wiesel speaking at Buchenau during Obama's first visit in Germany. It is really uncomprehensible, that a person who has gone through this ordeal and survived is able to speak with such humanity and love without bitterness but hope for transformation to a better future at this place where humanity was lost.


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