Jewish homes, shops and synagogues were ransacked across Germany and parts of Austria on Nov. 9, 1938. Jews were beaten to death and thousands were shipped to concentration camps. Synagogues burned. We remember this pogrom as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass the sounds of Jewish windows breaking, an eerie premonition of the larger disaster to follow.
But in Judaism the sound of breaking glass is more commonly associated with the end of a wedding ceremony. Tradition has it that the breaking of glass was originally included in the ceremony to recall the shattering of the walls around the ancient city of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple.
This sound commemorates the foundational trauma of rabbinic Judaism and the beginning of thousands of years of exile. Today family and friends greet it with joyous shouts of mazel tov.
How does the breaking of the glass in one case symbolize that which is irreparably damaged, while in the other it acknowledges that things do break, but in their shattering a world of new possibilities can emerge?
Memory is always about choice. We can choose to remember the past in ways that will stir our anger and rage. We can choose to remember in ways that provoke sadness and pain. And we can choose to remember in ways that challenge us to take from the past those lessons that we need in order to be the people we most want to be and create the world in which we most want to live.
Nowhere is that kind of thinking more important than in connection with the Shoah. And it has never been more important than it is right now, as we become the first generation who will live without the survivors themselves. The passing of the generation that witnessed the atrocities firsthand leaves us with two profound challenges. First, we must acknowledge that continuing to remember as we have for the last 60 years will become increasingly difficult without the presence of the survivors themselves. Second, to appreciate the opportunity we now have, precisely because we ourselves were not the primary victims, to remember those past hurts in ways that not only maintain our connection with the past, but help us build a better future.
Admittedly, the destruction of the Temple was 2,000 years ago and for some the wounds of the Shoah are too deep and fresh. But for someone like me, a fourth-generation American Jew with no family that I know of affected in the Shoah, how should we remember?
Will we remember past affliction in ways that bind us to the pain and constrain our ability to move forward, or in ways that recall the suffering, even as they celebrate the new futures born of them? With the enormous success of the world Jewish community during the past 69 years since Kristallnacht the establishment of the state of Israel, the growth of the freest, wealthiest, most vibrant Jewish diaspora in the history of our people perhaps now is the moment to begin making that turn. Perhaps now is the time to move beyond remembering how our glass was broken and begin to break our glasses as a reminder that we are much more than victims.
What will the sound of breaking glass evoke in us this year?
Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is president of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California