The destruction of European Jewry still reverberates for Jews today.
Joe Rogan was asked the other day how many Jews there are in the world. He said a billion. Then he hedged his bet and went down to half a billion. I wish he were right; it would be easier to get a quorum together for afternoon prayers. The reality is that there is no really accurate number for Jews in the world for a couple of reasons. Not everyone who identifies as Jewish is Jewish according to traditional Jewish law; on the other side of the ledger, there are many people who don't know that they are Jews. The present estimate is around 15.8 million, with nearly half in Israel. The one thing that is clear is that there are fewer Jews today than there were on September 1, 1939. There were 18 million Jews in those days, and according to every count and estimate, we are nowhere near back to that number. The U.S. has nearly tripled its population during the same time.
The Holocaust technically ended with the Allies' entry into the camps. Thousands of Jews died in the hands of the Allies, as their condition was not salvageable. So, sometime in the summer of 1945, Jews stopped dying from the actions of the Germans and their partners in murder. There were plenty of people in conquered countries who gladly helped the Germans by either identifying local Jews and/or participating in killings sanctioned by the invading army. As long as there have been Jews, there have been Jew haters, and when permission is given, murder is at the top of the menu. The common phrase after October 7, 2023, was "the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust." And while the 1,200 killed in one day certainly fulfill that description, the thousands of Hamas terrorists in the homes and towns in southern Israel found themselves exactly like SS, Gestapo, and Wehrmacht soldiers 80 years earlier: they could do whatever they wanted. And they did. Some of the first responders committed suicide, not being able to live with the horrors that they saw. Eyewitnesses described torture, rape, and murder of a depraved sort that defies a connection with humanity. Just as in Dachau or the open fields of Ukraine, the Palestinians could kill Jews in the cruelest manners possible with no immediate fear of punishment.
After the war, many Jews ended up in hundreds of Displaced Persons or DP camps. They could not go home, as there was nothing to go back to. Many found their homes on the Russian side of the developing Cold War map. Those who did go home received unfriendly welcomes, and some were killed by those who took their property. There was little hope for the Jews in these camps until the state of Israel was formed, and then they had somewhere to go. The largest population of Holocaust survivors today is in Israel. My parents were considered Holocaust survivors, though technically they fled Germany just prior to the war. When we look around at growing orthodox communities in the West (they are the only branch of Judaism that is growing) and the thriving and dynamic state of Israel, we take it all for granted. I need a kosher restaurant and a synagogue on the other side of the world—no problem. But immediately after the war, one would have been considered mad to suggest that such would be the case. The Jewish community in the U.S. was small, and the most advanced and largest Jewish communities lay decimated. Kelly Johnson, the designer of the U-2 and SR-71, once quipped that every plane needs a miracle and that the SR-71 was all miracles. One might say something similar about Jewish life after the destruction of communities from Greece to Russia.
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A friend and I found ourselves the only people to come to the lab on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the modern state of Israel. As we always did, we listened to the noon radio broadcast, which obviously focused on Independence Day celebrations. Vice President Al Gore was present for the festivities. Ehud Barak, head of the Knesset opposition, spoke. He discussed the Holocaust and said that the existence of the IDF guaranteed that such things could never happen again. And this speech encapsulated one of the great challenges in the age of Israel. He did not say God willing or with the help of God. Nope. We've got an army, so they can't massacre us. The pogrom in 2023 was a startling rebuke to the foundational belief that the army would not allow the wholesale murder of Jews. Israel and Judaism are inextricably intertwined, and Judaism is about God and Torah. Secular Zionists wanted the language, calendar, history, holidays, and land of Judaism without the obligations of Torah and commandments. But this has created a problem that exists to this day: how do you convince people that Jewish things are important enough to defend but not so important to become religious?
Conservative and Reform synagogues are losing members, with many of the younger folks marrying out. I remember as a child hearing the weekly Torah portion and looking at the English translation. The importance of keeping the Sabbath would be read, and then we would jump in our car to drive home. The significance of eating kosher would be invoked, and then we'd go to McDonald's. All of us live with contradictions in our lives, but some contradictions become too much. Many Jews who belong to non-Orthodox congregations either drop out or become religiously observant, as did yours truly. As a very prominent German rabbi said 150 years ago, "Either it is the word of God, and we should keep it, or it is not, and we shouldn't be wasting our time with any of it."
Presently, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis living outside of Israel. This is no surprise. Israel is an amazing country, and the people are incredible. Gad Saad recently related that his daughter cried the night before their departure from Israel on their way back to Canada. Israel is a relatively expensive country, and it does not have nearly enough positions for all of the highly trained people produced by local universities. So in many U.S. cities, one can find lots of Israelis and Israeli-style kosher restaurants. Many say that they look forward to coming home, but on a scale of quality of life, the U.S. offers a relatively low cost of living with numerous benefits: bigger houses, cheaper cars, more stores, lots of tourist destinations. One understands why many simply stay outside of Israel, though if they could have the same standard of living, they would rather be in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. I once needled an older fellow at a synagogue in Las Vegas about coming home. "As long as my grandchildren are in San Francisco, I'm staying put." I understand him.
The Holocaust, on the one hand, ended, but on the other, its effects are still felt today. Not just one day of the year, but every single day. There are fewer Jews in the world today than there had been, and the state of Israel became the refuge for the survivors of the destruction. Jew hatred did not go away, and as we saw recently, when given a free hand, the Jew haters will kill in as evil a manner as their Nazi heroes of old (numerous houses in Gaza had Mein Kampf in Arabic). The Jewish people keep moving forward, and the ancient blessing and curse of being good or evil to the Jews still applies. We can't undo the Holocaust, but we can do our best to make sure that our enemies do not and will not win, with the help of God.
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