VOICES OF CONGREGANTS

Michael Selz

Michael Selz shared these reflections with our congregation during the 2009 Yom Kippur Afternoon Service.

Last summer, I was listening to the radio on my way home from work and heard a disturbing story. According to German hospital and abortion clinic records, some two million German women were raped in the spring of 1945 following Germany’s surrender, mostly by occupying Soviet Red Army soldiers. It’s estimated that 200,000 children were conceived in this way. In post-war communist East Germany, one victim says she was forced to sign a statement effectively denying the rapes even occurred. “As a result,” they said, “for many women, political fear and shame, mixed with guilt about Nazi atrocities, created a kind of code of silence.”
As I thought about the actions of the Red Army soldiers, I was reminded of a sermon that Rabbi Stern delivered after September 11. In it, he reminded us that Jews have not survived history by capitulating to our enemies. That many times, we have had to rise to a challenge, to meet our aggressors with fiercer aggression. But that as Jews, we can never allow ourselves to take pleasure in violence. That we can never give in to bloodlust or fury. That we must do precisely what we need to do to reach our goal, and then cease.

Clearly, the Red Army soldiers did not adhere to such a code. But how did they justify their actions? Somehow they were able to objectify their victims. Perhaps in an anything-goes environment, they surrendered their personal accountability to the mob, and the German women became plunder, the spoils of war.
What can we learn from such villainy? How is this relevant to us, today? I think that whenever we wrap ourselves in the agenda of a clan, we release ourselves from personal accountability. It’s seductive, surely, to blindly swear allegiance and become a part of something bigger than ourselves. And there is no shortage, today, of ideologues bent on helping us to do just that. They expertly stoke the fires inside us, of fear, and hate, at the expense of our independent thought.
But God never releases us from the responsibility of our actions. So how can we?
One response to Yom Kippur, then, is to know when to clap our hands over our ears. To hold ourselves separate and apart. To resist the lure of the mob. For me, it’s a promise to never, ever suspend judgment, or allow someone else to do my thinking, or set my standards for me. To recognize prejudice and xenophobia when they rear their heads. To avoid intellectual and moral sloth. To be personally accountable to my own moral code and my God.
AMEN.

On Torah
Michael Selz