REFLECTION
ON THE OCCASION OF
INTERFAITH INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
At
THE HOLOCAUST EDUCATION CENTER, GLEN COVE, NY
Good morning. My name is Donald Russo. I come to give a personal reflection.
I am a good Catholic boy from a good Catholic family, or so I’ve been led to believe.
But eighty years ago, what did I know of Jews?
For the first six years of my life, I lived in an apartment complex on Avenue I in Brooklyn where my parents were one of only two Christian families.
But what did I know of Jews, except that my father’s best friend was named Sam Hamel?
I rode the wave to suburbia to a well-healed, white village on Long Island.
So, what did I know of Jews? Just the clamor and protests over establishing a Jewish Center in this Village.
To me, as a young kid, it was background noise.
More noise about the Jews I remember took place every year at Holy Week services when I heard the Gospel proclaim, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” I took for granted that the Jews killed Jesus. So it goes.
In my immediate family, I heard no talk of Jews because my parents never told the kids what was going on. Whenever the Jews were mentioned within my hearing, my mother would always spell out J-E-W-S.
Nor was I ever exposed to Jew hatred in Catholic school by the nuns or lay teachers.
So, what did I really know about Jews?
I now jump to my days in the Seminary during the years of the start of the Second Vatican Council.
The upper classmen were talking about Jews and an event called the Holocaust.
So, I was becoming more aware of the Jews. But really, what did I know?
I happen to be a sibling of Vatican II, as I studied in Rome while the council was going on.
My awareness of Jews and the Jewish people grew exponentially. The approval of the document Nostra Aetate became a watershed event for many.
But it was not until the experience of one event that my eyes were opened and changed my understanding of Jews forever.
DACHAU –
starting as a curiosity for four theological students and friends and ending as an event which changed one of our lives forever – MINE.
Curious, when the inhabitants of the town knew nothing of the camp when we asked directions. All they would concede was that we check at the nearby U.S. Army base. They would know.
Then. . . SILENCE.
Agonizing, deep-seated, eternally long Silence. What did I know about Jews? More and more
I returned to the United States and my vocation as a teacher began.
I remember spending four hours on my first visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC.
The SILENCE. Again, the silence. . . and the listening within that deep silence.!
Teaching religion on the high school, college, and adult levels, I vowed to be as ecumenical and interfaith as I could in my approach to my own and other religions.
I did doctoral studies at NYU. What did I know of Jews? Oy! What a trip! Jews and Judaism suddenly became a brightly colored, ten-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle.
I move ahead forty years when God gifted me with my now colleague, tutor, and dear friend, Rabbi Gadi Capela.
If NYU was a trip, I now had a companion on the journey. We have shared the height, the width, and the depth of our faiths.
We would talk, and listen, question, shake our heads and laugh, reflect and at times even pray. Jews and Judaism exploded as a kaleidoscope. What did I know of Jews and Judaism? More and more and more.
And what do I now know of Jews and Judaism especially when Ancestry tells me I’m 4% Jewish!
My friends, what do I know of Jews? Please forgive me, but NOT ENOUGH
As a Christian one of my first responses to my Jewish friends would be to ask them if FORGIVENESS was an option,
BUT, NO! I look at their faces, angry, incredulous, begging not to Christianize the Shoah.
Perhaps, now is not the time. . . But what? But when? I have to keep listening without an answer.
I belong to a church that has had a history of turbulent relations with the Jews and anti-Semitic consequences.
However, sixty years ago something changed, and a slow growth in reconciliation began.
Our present Pope, Francis made a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.
Allow me to share a thought
POPE FRANCIS, at one point says: We humans are menaced by silence. We feel compelled to fill the silent void with our words and speech. We long to hear the sound of our voice. To be silent in the face of unspeakable tragedy is to allow the victims to bear their own witness. To be silent is to give voice to the victim. To be silent is to hear the victim. To be silent is to be crushed by the weight of what was done in this place, Auschwitz. The place speaks for itself.
Right before his visit, Francis said he “would like to go to that place of horror without speeches, without crowds.” He said he intended to go “alone, enter, pray,” adding, “And may the Lord give me the grace to cry.”
AND HE PRAYED. . . IN SILENCE
My prayer today I utter in your presence and in the presence of God himself:
Dear God,
Give me the strength to BE SILENT, the true, deep silence of prayer, one of the languages of God
Help me to LISTEN, with a listening that penetrates the other; a listening that does not form answers while the other speaks.
Lord, give me the courage to REMEMBER, not with the nostalgic remembering of the good old days, but a REMEMBERING that is dangerous, that demands risk on my part to speak out and act.
Thank you for allowing me to stand before you today.
May God bless us all and grant us true Shalom.
Dr. Don Russo
