Michael Zank

Words, on the occasion of the BU Hillel and Elie Wiesel Center candle lighting ceremony, April 8, 2021

I light this candle

to remind us that

it is not enough

to say, Never Again!

If we don’t know

what it is we are

supposed to remember.

How can we remember

what we never experienced?

But we never experienced

Sinai, or

the House of Bondage, and yet

we remember

If I forget Thee Jerusalem

But how can I remember

What I have not seen?

 

It is these kinds of

impossible commandments

we resolve to keep

today

They are not too far from

our mouths, they say.

But our words fail

Not because of the silence

of forgetting

but because there are too many of them.

Too many names to recall

Too many lost

How can they say

there is a God when

even God forgot

to remember?

I light a candle

to the God

who

forgot to write

their names

in the book

of life.