On Yom HaShoah, we gather not only to remember but to feel. We remember the six million, but more than that, we mourn them. We grieve a world that allowed it to happen, and a people who were left with no power, no voice, and no refuge. The Holocaust defies comprehension, not because it is so far removed, but because it is so achingly close to the heart of every Jew. It lives in our bones, in our language, in the silence between generations.
And now, we find ourselves living through another moment of trauma. October 7 shattered our illusions. The dead were not names in a book or faces in fading photographs—they were family. Friends. Children. The Holocaust and October 7 are not the same, but they are joined by a deeper, tragic kinship. They reveal, in different ways and across different generations, that the hatred of Jews is a thread that runs through the tapestry of human history. We are not imagining it. We have never imagined it. It is real, and it is relentless.
But neither are these tragedies interchangeable.
The Holocaust was a singular rupture in human civilization—a calculated, industrialized genocide that stripped Jews of their humanity and their lives. It was the abyss into which a powerless people were cast, abandoned by nations, scapegoated by neighbors, and betrayed by the very concept of humanity. It represents a time when we had no voice in the halls of power and no soldiers to stand at our gates. It was, at its core, a tragedy of absolute powerlessness.
October 7 is a different kind of tragedy. It did not happen in exile, but in the land of our ancestors. It did not unfold in silence, but in the glare of global attention. And still, they came for us. Still, they murdered and tortured and burned. It is a tragedy not of powerlessness, but of vulnerability—of the enduring truth that even with sovereignty, Jews remain a target for annihilation. The hatred changes form, but it does not vanish. It adapts. It waits. And then, it returns.
We must hold these truths in tension: that we are no longer helpless, but we are not invincible; that we are home, but not always safe; that we are strong, but still mournfully familiar with grief. The Holocaust and October 7 do not live in competition. They live in conversation. One tells the story of what happens when we have no land. The other tells the story of what it means to defend that land and still be hated for it.
There is a line in the Haggadah we read each year: “In every generation, they rise against us to destroy us.” It is not metaphor. It is memory. And it is prophecy. But the line continues: “And the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands.” Our survival is not luck. It is will. It is resilience. It is something fierce and sacred and unbroken in the Jewish soul.
Memory is the Jewish sixth sense. It is not passive recollection; it is a way of seeing. Through memory, we perceive threats others miss. Through memory, we name evil even when the world hesitates. Through memory, we connect past and present, drawing moral clarity from generational pain. Memory sharpens our instincts, shapes our conscience, and binds us to one another. It is not simply something we carry—it is how we navigate the world.
To compare every tragedy is to cheapen all tragedy. To name each one honestly is to remember more fully. Yom HaShoah is not a lens through which we must understand every act of violence against Jews—but it is a mirror that reflects the oldest truth we know: that to be a Jew in the world is to walk through history with both a wound and a flame. We carry pain. We carry purpose. And we carry the names.
We are not victims. We are not just survivors. We are a people bound by memory and obligated by it. And if we honor these tragedies—each on their own terms, each with their own weight—then perhaps we do more than remember. Perhaps we begin to heal. And perhaps we remember who we are.