Dear Naama and Leor,
You know the stories. You’ve seen the black-and-white photographs of skeletal bodies and crumpled shoes behind glass. You’ve walked through the Yad Vashem Children’s Memorial, where names echo in the darkness like stars extinguished before their time. You lit candles. You said Never Again.
But now, I worry that all we taught you was death.
We showed you how Jews died, but not why they lived.
We taught you how the world hated Jews, but not why being a Jew is still worth living for.
We made memory sacred—but left you without a mission.
And that’s not your fault. That’s ours.
For my generation, Holocaust memory was a kind of sacred inheritance. It was the defining Jewish narrative of the postwar world. It shaped how we saw ourselves—resilient, burdened, moral. It was the reason for Jewish federations, the argument for Israel, the urgency behind every JCC fundraising letter and Hebrew school lesson. We turned the Shoah into curriculum. And understandably so. How could we not? Six million. One and a half million children. Grandparents burned in forests. Mothers gassed. We wanted you to remember. We needed you to remember.
But somewhere along the way, Holocaust education became our theology. We made Auschwitz the center of Jewish life. We gave you identity rooted in trauma. And in doing so, we may have stripped Judaism of joy, purpose, and divine aspiration. You learned how Jews died. But we forgot to teach you why it matters that Jews live.
There’s a heartbreaking assumption at the heart of Holocaust education: that memory alone can preserve identity. We told ourselves that if we showed you enough films, if you interviewed a survivor, if you went on the March of the Living, you would “never forget.” And that remembering would make you proud, committed, maybe even Zionist. But here’s what we didn’t understand: memory without mission doesn’t build continuity. Trauma alone doesn’t inspire loyalty. And identity built solely on suffering cannot outlast the generation that suffered. You can remember everything we taught you—and still walk away. Not because you’re ungrateful. But because we failed to give you something to walk toward.
And that’s exactly what is happening. A 2020 Pew study found that among American Jews under 30, only 48% feel a strong emotional connection to Israel. That was before October 7. Since then, we’ve seen Jewish college students harassed in dorms, locked in libraries, surrounded by hostile mobs—and many of their Jewish peers not only said nothing, but joined the protestors. We raised a generation who say “Never Again” on Yom HaShoah—and “From the River to the Sea” the rest of the year.
Holocaust memory has often been reframed as a universal moral lesson: “This is what happens when hate goes unchecked. Stand up against all injustice.” And that’s true. But it’s incomplete. In trying to universalize the Shoah, we drained it of its particular Jewish soul. We turned Never Again into a slogan for every cause except our own. We turned a Jewish catastrophe into a generic ethical warning. And in doing so, we raised a generation of Jewish kids who fight for everyone—except Jews.
You learned to say Black Lives Matter before you learned to say Am Yisrael Chai.
You were taught to question Israeli power before you were taught why Jews needed power in the first place.
You were taught to recognize systemic oppression—but not to see antisemitism when it wore a keffiyeh and carried a Molotov cocktail.
Because we were afraid. Afraid of seeming too tribal. Too particular. Too Jewish.
So we outsourced your moral education to the progressive world, thinking it would overlap with ours. And now we’re shocked when Jewish kids walk away from Israel, from community, from peoplehood. But maybe the most painful part is this: it’s not that you rejected what we taught you. It’s that you took it seriously.
Judaism is not a religion of memory alone. It is a faith of transmission. The Shema doesn’t say, “Remember these words.” It says, “Teach them to your children.” But teaching isn’t just about information. It’s about covenant. Passion. Purpose. A story worth belonging to.
We told you what was done to Jews. But we didn’t tell you what Jews were put on this earth to do. We told you about the gas chambers, but not about Shabbat. About Kristallnacht, but not about Sinai. About Nazis, but not about Negev farmers, Moroccan piyutim, or the brilliance of the Talmudic mind.
We raised mourners, not builders. Witnesses, not guardians. Children who carry sorrow, but not sacred responsibility. We taught you Zachor—remember. But we forgot Veshinantam—teach, live, pass on.
You need more than memory. You need mission. A reason to be Jewish that’s not about what happened to us—but about what’s possible because we’re still here.
Jonathan Sacks wrote, “The Holocaust did not define what it is to be a Jew. It merely defined what it is to be without Jews.” Judaism, he said, is not a religion of tragedy but of hope. Yet too often, we’ve inverted that message. We gave you Elie Wiesel, but not Heschel. We gave you Night, but not God in Search of Man. We gave you the gates of Auschwitz, but not the gates of prayer.
You deserve a Judaism that tells you your soul is a reflection of the divine. That mitzvot are more than customs—they’re acts of cosmic repair. That our people are not a relic of victimhood, but a living covenant, with something urgent to bring into the world.
Not just Never Again—but Again and Again: again we light candles, again we build schools, again we plant vineyards, again we sing psalms, again we say yes to life. And yes—to one another.
If we want you to be proud Jews, we have to give you more than a museum of ashes. We have to give you an inheritance that breathes. A story that sings. A community that fights not only against antisemitism but for a life of holiness, meaning, and peoplehood.
That’s what Rabbi Yitz Greenberg meant when he said, “The Holocaust is not the end of the Jewish people—it is a test of whether the Jewish people will choose life again.”
So, Naama and Leor, if you’re reading this wondering what I actually want from you—it’s simple. I want you to be Jews not just because of Auschwitz, but because of Avraham. Because of Sarah. Because of Sinai. Because of Jerusalem. Because of the people who danced at weddings in Krakow and chanted Torah in Baghdad and kissed their children goodnight with the Shema on their lips.
I want you to remember not just how we died, but how we lived. And still live. Because if we forget that—we will lose you. And your children. And your grandchildren. The Nazis killed six million Jews. But the Jewish future will be decided not by murderers, but by memory without meaning.
We cannot live as a people merely remembering death. We must live as a people choosing life.
Zachor. But also: V’chai bahem—live by them. We don’t just mourn the past. We inherit it. And then we build.
Love,
Abba
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