“The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.” RL Collingwood
At the conclusion of the recent movie Nuremberg this quote flashed across the screen. It reminded me of a related concept, an idea shared by the German-Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno - “After Auschwitz no further poems are possible, except on the foundation of Auschwitz itself”. We are all the products of the events that shape us, but we must understand that the events and the shaping can be not only in our own experience, but also in what has happened to those we learn from, and indeed to all who not only see, hear, or experience, but also all those who live with the consequences of the unimaginable. And it is in conceiving the unimaginable, creating the circumstances under which the unimaginable happens, that societies can either learn or go on to permit even more of the unimaginable.
We stand 81 years removed from Auschwitz. Yet I can pick up my phone and within minutes see both denial that it ever happened, as well as regret that it didn’t completely serve the purpose of destroying us all. I can walk in the Quad of the most storied universities in the nation, and hear rhetoric indistinguishable from Nazi Germany. I can travel to my hometown of Toronto, stand at a street corner I’ve been to hundreds of times, and see antisemitic images so vile they could have come from Der Stuermer. I can do these things today.
Yet Collingwood and Adorno do not have the whole story. Yes, of course the worst that can be done by humanity expands even the imagination of what the worst is. We saw that on 10/7. But the logic works the other way as well.
Out of the ashes of an ages long diaspora - of which the Shoah was the worst and the last but far from the only experience of hatred, persecution, and death - the Jewish people found ways to build new foundations, to mark the beginning of a different chapter, to do things which would boggle the minds of those who lived when there were no Jewish soldiers defending their people, when there were no Jewish prodigies allowed to innovate and change the worlds of science, medicine, or literature, when there was no chance of making a desert bloom.
Thinking about where we are today, the time and manner in which we observe and celebrate - Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Haatzmaut - makes a great deal of sense. And even though I can look back 3 years or 81 years to see the worst of what can be done to us, I can look ahead and see that on the foundations - all the foundations - of what has transpired since then, we can build a resilient, strong, innovative and inspired future for the Jewish people.