Dear Students and Friends of the Elie Wiesel Center at Boston University:

As we enter the Jewish New Year and the season of High Holidays known as yamim nora’im, or Days of Awe, we celebrate the renewal of creation. We proclaim divine kingship by listening to the call of the shofar, and we prepare to give account on the Day of Atonement. The German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) emphasized that Jewish ritual centered on the purity of the soul, which he took as a task we must take upon ourselves every day. The creator renews our soul every morning, but we must purify it ourselves as we stand before the Eternal Judge on the Day of Atonement and every day of our lives. Our tradition requires confession of sins before we can be forgiven. Our ritual prayers state this confession in the first person plural. Why? Because all sins, even those between us and our Creator, affect those around us. No human being is an island. Hence, we are told, God cannot forgive us unless we first ask forgiveness of those we have failed. 

This year, we must ask the forgiveness of our Black and brown sisters and brothers whose rights to equality and justice we have ignored too long. We must ask their forgiveness especially now when we find that African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities are particularly hard hit by a pandemic that our nation failed to address as quickly and as forcefully as the obligation of pikuah nefesh would have required. We must ask forgiveness of all of our fellow creatures whom we failed to protect when we ignored, year after year, the signs of climate change and global warming. Our planet, the habitable world that came into being in the beginning when God spoke it into existence, feels the force of human hubris that some say was instilled in us by the very words of Sefer Bereshit: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, lord it over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, and all of the living things crawling the earth!” What does it mean that God created us in his image and his likeness? According to the great medieval Andalusian philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138–1204), better known as the Rambam, we are alike God only in regard to our share in reason. As Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote in his posthumous Ethics, acting with reason is the condition of human happiness. 

Spinoza also makes it clear that it is reason that teaches us to prefer long-term advantages over short-term satisfactions. We all know what needs to happen and what we need to do, in order for this globe to remain habitable, but we blind ourselves to the consequences science tells us are inevitable if we don’t act now. We have to change our habits. We need to stop ignoring science and act with reason, even if it means that we have to make do with less now so that those who come after us will have something. 

Hermann Cohen believed there was a deep agreement between progressive social and legal reform and the Jewish idea of the messianic age, that progressive politics, the promotion of well-being for all, was not just a rational human obligation but an ideal guarded by Jewish religious life. As we prepare for the High Holidays, let us remember that tikkun olam, the repair of a broken world, while it may be too much for any one individual to accomplish, remains our collective obligation.

May the New Year be blessed and sweet for all of us.

Michael Zank, PhD
Professor of Religion, Jewish, and Medieval Studies
Director, EWCJS
2020-21 Honorary Starr Fellow, CJS, Harvard University

On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Consul General to New England Zeev Boker delivered the following remarks at Boston University where Ambassador Boker helped to unveil the "Beyond Duty” exhibition. The opening of the exhibition preceded a lecture by Prof. Michael Grodin (MED, SPH, EWCJS) and a panel of international diplomats commemorating those who went “beyond duty,” often defying their own governments, to issue life-saving documents that allowed thousands of Jews to escape Nazi persecution.

Good afternoon.  I wish to thank AJC New England and Boston University for partnering with us to present this important program today and for launching the “Beyond Duty” exhibition.  I also wish to thank all of our speakers and in particular, the consuls general for being a part of the panel, and I especially wish to welcome Holocaust survivors.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs tomorrow, January 27, marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp during World War II.  Close to one million Jews were murdered there. Indeed it was the State of Israel in 2005 that took the initiative at the United Nations to establish this day of global remembrance in order to ensure that the nations of the world will honor the memory of Holocaust victims while rejecting Holocaust denial and commit to preventing future genocides.   Indeed, It is a tribute to the tenacity of Israeli diplomats led by Roni Adam that the UN finally gave its approval to International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was initially met with resistance in the General Assembly.  

To honor the memories of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs,  in collaboration with Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum, created the exhibition “Beyond Duty.” Yad Vashem honors not only the memory of victims but also those who resisted and fought back against the Nazis.  In addition, Yad Vashem gives special recognition to those selfless non-Jewish individuals who, at great personal risk to themselves and their families aided and rescued Jews. These heroes are known as “Righteous Among the Nations,”  and close to 27,000 have been so recognized.  

When I served as Israeli Ambassador in Slovakia, it was my privilege on International Holocaust Remembrance Day to confer official recognition of  “Righteous Among the Nations” upon individuals who saved Jewish lives: they included bishops and clergy as well as simple farmers and city folks who related incredible stories of hiding Jews, including in holes in the ground.   

Among those recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” were 34 diplomats from a variety of countries.   A few of these brave diplomats, such as Chiune Sugihara and Raoul Wallenberg are known to many, but there were others whose names are not known, and it is important that their legacies be brought to light as well.  It is hard to overestimate the multiplier effect of the actions of the diplomats who saved thousands of Jewish lives. 

While most countries of the free world were reluctant to help Jewish refugees during WWII,  and while most diplomats continued to employ standard procedures, only a very few felt that extraordinary times required extraordinary action and were willing to act against their governments’ policies, and suffer the consequences.  Moreover, they did so in the context of a war-time totalitarian Nazi regime where their very lives were at stake. Their stories inspire us today as they represent the power of the individual to do the right thing in the face of the darkest and most evil chapter of our recent past.    

The Exhibition that you witnessed here today at BU represents the first time this is being shown in New England, and will be open from tomorrow until February 6 at the State House in Boston.  

“Beyond Duty” teaches us that we are not alone.    On a regional level, the Consulate is proud of our partnerships with elected officials, major Jewish organizations and opinion leaders in New England to combat Anti-Semitism.   A majority of the New England states, including Massachusetts, recently passed resolutions pledging to combat anti-Semitism and to adopt the definition of anti-Semitism set forth in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, or “IHRA.”  The IHRA consists of a comprehensive definition that includes all types of contemporary antisemitism, including anti-Zionism, and is a meaningful tool in the fight against antisemitism, both in education, political discourse and in the field of law enforcement.   

Last week,  Israeli President Reuven Rivlin welcomed  40 world leaders to Jerusalem who came to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  This was a tremendous show of solidarity and commitment on the part of the international community to preserve the memory of the Jewish lives lost in WWII.   These leaders, including the American Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, signaled a deep commitment to fighting anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial and racism.  President Rivlin thanked them for their solidarity with the Jewish people and for their commitment to Holocaust remembrance. He noted the critical role that the Allies played in defeating Nazism and in liberating the camps.  In his words: “Antisemitism does not stop with the Jews. Anti-Semitism and racism are a malignant disease that destroys and pulls societies apart from within, and no society and no democracy is immune.” He went on to describe Israel as a “state that looks for partnership—that demands partnership,”  and he described the Jewish people as “a people that remember.” Unfortunately, the Jewish people understand what it is NOT to remember since history repeats itself. President Rivlin urged all countries to officially adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and make efforts to work according to it.

Today we are gathered together to draw inspiration from the courage of the Righteous Diplomats as we honor their moral choices and explore ways to walk in their footsteps. May the memories of our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust and those who waged war on Nazism, be forever engraved in our hearts. The Jewish people are strong and the State of Israel remains committed to ensuring that Never Again truly means Never Again.