Beshallah

AllClass of 2026 Senior Sermons

Prayer is rarely enough. Jewish leaders are acutely aware of this reality today. Cantors, in particular, know that there is far more to our jobs than leading prayer.  

When the Israelites notice the Egyptian army chasing them, they cry out to God (Exodus 14:10), complain to Moses (Exodus 14:11–12), and Moses reassures them that they will be saved (Exodus 14:13–14). Then, there is a gap in the narrative between verses 14 and 15, when God responds to Moses, saying:

מַה־תִּצְעַ֖ק אֵלָ֑י דַּבֵּ֥ר אֶל־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל וְיִסָּֽעוּ׃   

Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward.  

A close reading of these verses reveals a lack of clarity both regarding the order of events and our characters’ behavior. The following questions can illuminate the successes and failures of Moses’ leadership at this pivotal moment for the future Jewish People:

First, if the Israelites felt comfortable praying directly to God, why did they subsequently complain to Moses? And did Moses initially pray to God with the Israelites? 

These two questions, in different ways, paint Moses as accessible. While it is natural and common for leaders to field complaints, maybe Moses invited their criticism by being too approachable. Or perhaps he lacked confidence in his role, understanding himself as one of the Israelites rather than as their leader. Although Seforno does not write this explicitly, he comments on verse 15 that:  

“Moses’ outcry was one of concern with the rebellious attitude of the people who not only were afraid—something that could be forgiven—but who had dared to be sarcastic in their hour of danger, ridiculing Moses’ leadership to the point where he was afraid that they would refuse to enter the sea when told to.” 

When leaders are too accommodating or lack confidence, they risk losing their constituents, facing excessive complaining and far worse outcomes, especially in moments of crisis. 

Next, if Moses did indeed cry out to God with the Israelites, why would he also reassure them that God would deliver them? This question also points to a possible lack of clarity about Moses’ position. Moses seems unsure of himself, stuck between God and the people. In vital communal moments, leaders’ role confusion can be catastrophic. 

Finally, if Moses did not pray to God with the Israelites, why does God tell him to stop? The Babylonian Talmud (Sotah 37a) fills in the gap by imagining that Moses prayed separately: 

At that time, Moses was prolonging his prayer. The Holy One, Blessed be God, said to him: My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me?  

There is a time for prayer and a time for action. Both the Torah and the Talmud caution that praying extensively in a moment that calls for decisive action can have devastating consequences.

As a cantor, I believe in the power of prayer. Personal and communal prayer can be transformational. Both we and God need our prayers. Yet there is a limit to what prayer can accomplish. As Jewish leaders, cantors embody both prayer and action.

I am proud that Conservative cantors are ambassadors for the education they receive at 91�첥, which is simultaneously academic, deeply meaningful, and relevant. Conservative cantors model how to hold both tradition and change in their prayer-leading, especially as they balance and blend traditional Jewish music—including but not limited to hazzanut—and new developments in Jewish music. Today’s cantors do much more than lead services. The following five pillars describe what I believe it means to be a 21^st-century cantor, defined more by our overall service to our communities than through our prayer-leading alone: 

1. Cantors are spiritual leaders: full members of a clergy team and staff team, who collaborate with lay leaders. They are team players who model authentic engagement with Conservative Judaism.   

2. Cantors are community builders. Our current moment calls for a relationship-centered approach to building communities. Cantors respond to the needs of our constituents, which necessitates knowing our people well and finding ways to help them learn, grow, connect with one another, and bask in their accomplishments. Empowering congregants to take an active role in the ritual life of a community through service-leading; reading Torah/Haftarah and chanting megillot; serving as gabbaim; and offering words of Torah are all essential to building community.  

3. Alongside their rabbinic colleagues, cantors are pastors and officiants . Furthermore, as the roles of rabbi and cantor increasingly overlap, supporting people in the highs and lows of their lives has become a bigger part of the cantorate. To ameliorate rabbinic burnout and pipeline challenges, cantors can be available to respond to bereavements, to lead lifecycle events, and to officiate services independently. In fact, an increasing number of cantors in the Conservative Movement now serve as sole clergy members (Kol Bo) of their synagogues.  

4. Cantors are educators for every age and stage, from singing with children in an early childhood center and tot service, to running a children’s choir and religious school tefillah, to training b’nei mitzvah and inviting teens back after b’nei mitzvah to participate in synagogue life, to staffing teen trips and running HaZamir chapters, to adult education.  

5. Last but certainly not least, cantors are experts in music and tefillah. These are the nitty-gritty skills taught in the H. L. Miller Cantorial School: Hebrew, musicianship, liturgy, nusah (modes and motifs of prayer services), chanting, hazzanut, Jewish music history, Yiddish and Ladino repertoire as well as old and new Israeli and American Jewish music.   

We recently surveyed the past ten years of 91�첥’ Cantorial School alumni. One of our survey questions reads: “Which roles have taken a significant amount of your time since your ordination?” Here are the many roles that at least one third of the respondents checked, not including prayerleader: 

Administrator, b’nei mitzvah preparation, choir director, community programming, educator, Torah reader, lifecycle officiation, organizational leader, pastoral visits, planning and performing in concerts, public speaking, religious school/nursery school, song leader, spiritual guide, Torah/prayer coordinator, and writer.   

Because of the breadth of cantors’ training and experience, I urge Jewish day schools, Hillels, and Ramah camps to also consider cantors for positions that are typically held by rabbis.In Exodus 14, Moses lacked the wisdom of knowing when to pray and when to get going. Like the Israelites stepping into the sea, we too are entering unknown territory, many of us plagued with anxiety. We cannot know where we are headed or what the future will bring. Yet there will still certainly be times for prayer and times for action. And in both scenarios, cantors will be there, alongside their many partners, leading the way.

וַיֵּט֩ מֹשֶׁ֨ה אֶת־יָד֜וֹ עַל־הַיָּ֗ם וַיָּ֨שׇׁב הַיָּ֜ם לִפְנ֥וֹת בֹּ֙קֶר֙ לְאֵ֣יתָנ֔וֹ וּמִצְרַ֖יִם נָסִ֣ים לִקְרָאת֑וֹ וַיְנַעֵ֧ר יְהֹוָ֛ה אֶת־מִצְרַ֖יִם בְּת֥וֹךְ הַיָּֽם

וַיָּשֻׁ֣בוּ הַמַּ֗יִם וַיְכַסּ֤וּ אֶת־הָרֶ֙כֶב֙ וְאֶת־הַפָּ֣רָשִׁ֔ים לְכֹל֙ חֵ֣יל פַּרְעֹ֔ה הַבָּאִ֥ים אַחֲרֵיהֶ֖ם בַּיָּ֑ם לֹֽא־נִשְׁאַ֥ר בָּהֶ֖ם עַד־אֶחָֽד

וּבְנֵ֧י יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל הָלְכ֥וּ בַיַּבָּשָׁ֖ה בְּת֣וֹךְ הַיָּ֑ם וְהַמַּ֤יִם לָהֶם֙ חֹמָ֔ה מִֽימִינָ֖ם וּמִשְּׂמֹאלָֽם

Moshe held his arm out over the sea, and at the break of day the sea returned to its normal flow, and the Egyptians fled from it, but God propelled the Egyptians into the sea.The waters turned back and covered the chariots and the riders of all the troops of Pharaoh who had come with them to the sea. Not a single one of them remained. But the Israelites had gone through the sea on dry land, for them the waters were like walls to their right and to their left. (Exod. 14: 27-28)[1]

What follows in the text of the Torah itself is unbridled jubilation. We read “Az Yashir,” a triumphant song of military might in which we are told ” That song, found in chapter 15 of Shemot, is part of the daily liturgy established by the rabbinic authorities.

Lest we miss the point, takes the death of the Egyptians by water as a chance to make a larger point: Israel’s enemies die in ways fitting to their wickedness. “Egypt was lashed in water because they glorified themselves through water [by killing Jewish babies in the Nile].”^[2] The Midrash then spends 12 pericopes detailing the deaths of the wicked men of the Bible from the generation of the flood to Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian conqueror of Jerusalem. In classic midrashic fashion, this text utilizes other biblical verses to flesh out the imagery of the stories. The result is a series of violent vignettes, with the midrash dwelling on the “rightness” of the punishments of wicked people.

Tanhuma’s delight in the violent deaths of the wicked speaks to a satisfaction that can be derived from violence. Freud, in one of his earliest works, argued that violence, even abstracted violence through language, was a mechanism for working through trauma. “The reaction of an injured person to a trauma has really only then a perfect ‘cathartic’ effect if it is expressed in an adequate reaction like revenge.”^[3] Freud lends his imprimatur here to the joy that humans can take in watching their foes suffer. In the absence of real violence, he believes humans can have similar catharsis from verbal or artistic depictions of suffering. The delight in this rabbinic text may be understandable, but it can trouble those of us committed to the universality of God’s creations.

Luckily for us, the rabbinic tradition never speaks with only one voice. This moment of violent catharsis comes with ambivalence for the Rabbis. In one of the most famous midrashim, we get insight into God-the-universalist’s reaction to the death of Israel’s foes:

אָמַר רַבִּי שְׁמוּאֵל בַּר נַחְמָן אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹנָתָן: מַאי דִּכְתִיב ״וְלֹא קָרַב זֶה אֶל זֶה כׇּל הַלָּיְלָה״? בְּאוֹתָהּ שָׁעָה בִּקְּשׁוּ מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת לוֹמַר שִׁירָה לִפְנֵי הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא. אָמַר לָהֶן הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא: מַעֲשֵׂה יָדַי טוֹבְעִין בַּיָּם וְאַתֶּם אוֹמְרִים שִׁירָה לְפָנַי

Rabbi Shmuel son of Nachman says in the name of Rabbi Yohanan, “Why does the Torah say [in Exodus 14:20] ‘[the Israelites and Egyptians] did not come near one to the other all night?’ In that moment, the ministering angels requested to sing a song before the Holy one, blessed be he. The Holy one, blessed be he said to them, ‘The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you would sing a song before me?!’” (Sanhedrin 39b)

By having God himself refer to the Egyptians as “the works of my hands,” the midrash reminds us of the overriding commonality in the human condition. From the perspective of God, there is no joy in violent death and suffering.

This midrash is today beloved for its humanistic bent. It is often employed as a demonstration of the pathos of rabbinic Judaism. It is not, however, more or less authoritative than the pornographic violence of Tanhuma. Rabbinic Jews—like the Israelites in the Torah—had both the capacity to see the divine spark in all of God’s creatures, and also had the drive towards aggression as a way to face their own trauma.

We are the same. There are moments in our lives as Jews when we face the trauma of the world around us—in America and in Israel, with our families and in public—and feel an inclination towards cathartic violence, whether rhetorical or real. That is human, and it is Jewish. But equally human and equally Jewish is to meet the drive with what to look at our erstwhile targets and see the humanity within. We are the Israelites, but we are also the Egyptians.

This redemptive power of knowing that we are both aggressor and aggrieved underpins the yirah (awe/fear) at the core of our relationship with God. when God warns the Israelites of what will happen to them if they fail to keep the covenant, medieval commentator The Israelites leaving Egypt saw their foes suffering, and they did rejoice, but Rashi tells us that they also were able to see that this suffering was not something they would necessarily be spared. Even the chosen people are vulnerable to suffering, and though we may have base passions, we also have the capacity to rise above them when we see the humanity in the other.

Even at moments when we see our foes wracked with pain, perhaps pain that we feel they deserve, we have the opportunity, and the obligation, to see ourselves in them. Only this can stop the cycle of violent trauma that persisted in our parsha, where the victims glorified retributive violence and the sea became littered with the corpses of the work of God’s hands.

[1] Translations by Dr. Phil Keisman

^[2] Note that in his translation on Sefaria.org, Samuel Berman explains “glorified themselves by water” as referencing Pharaoh’s claiming that he created the Nile in Ezekiel 29:3. This requires ignoring the use of the verb “שנתגאו” in its plural form in order to make Pharaoh the subject of the sentence.

^[3] Joseph Breuer and Sigmand Freud, Studies in Hysteria. Translation A. A. Brill. (Nervous and Mental Health Disease Publishing, 1936).

Beshallah

All the Class of 2024 Senior Sermons

However, when looking back on those big events, sometimes it is the tiny moments that resonate most. I remember the sickly-sweet taste of the Manischewitz wine that I drank after making kiddush at my bat mitzvah more than I remember reading from the Torah. I can tell you every feeling I had when I saw my husband for the first time on our wedding day, but the details of the ceremony are already blurry after only a few years.

Why are those small moments so poignant? It seems to be a strange question to ask at this climactic point of the Torah. This week’s parashah, Beshallah, contains one of the Torah’s biggest moments. The Israelites finally break free of the Egyptians, crossing the Red Sea on dry land while the Egyptians drown in the closing sea behind them. Jubilant in their triumph, they sing to God, led by Moses and Miriam. For a brief moment, they are united in their faith and in the glory of the moment.

However, earlier in the story, the people are less certain that they want to cross the Sea. Understandably, they are fearful, with the Egyptians behind them and a vast expanse of water in front of them. Moses, uncertain about what to do, cries out to God, and God reprimands him, saying, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell B’nai Yisrael to go forward!” In that moment, Moses jumps into action, as the Torah tells us:

Then Moshe held out his arm over the sea and Hashem drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split, and the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.

(Exod. 14: 21-22)

Certainly, this seems like that crossing the sea safely, while the Egyptians are trapped behind them, should be the most that the Israelites could ask for from God. The people are escaping the Egyptians, God is fulfilling the promise of redemption, Moses is powerful enough that the people trust him, if only for a moment. This is the grand moment, the one that we recall every day, multiple times, in our liturgy when we recite Mi Kamokha. Surely this should be enough. However, there is a beautiful midrash in Shemot Rabbah that imagines God paying attention to the smaller details as well:

Rabbi Nehurai taught: a daughter of Israel passed in the sea with her son in her arms, and he cried. So she would reach out her hands and grab an apple or a pomegranate from the sea and give it to him, as it says, ‘And He led them through the depths, as through a wilderness.’ (Psalms 106:9) Just as they lacked for nothing in the wilderness, in the depths of the sea they lacked for nothing.

(Parashat Beshallah 21:10)

Like those moments from my bat mitzvah and wedding, this scene is incredibly poignant. At this momentous occasion, the Israelites would seem unreasonable for expecting more from God than simply getting them across the sea safely. It’s natural for children to be scared, just as it’s natural for their parents to soothe them, but even though we sometimes describe God as a parent, it is striking that God attends to the passing distress of the young in the midst of these dramatic events. After all, they will soon be back on dry land, safe from the Egyptians, truly free for the first time. However, the Rabbis imagine that God put fruits in the sea to comfort the children. It is the tiny detail that makes all the difference for the youngest of B’nai Yisrael.

Why does this small act of comfort matter? Because, as it turns out, those children are the ones who will grow up and then enter the Land to conquer it as part of the next generation. That transitional moment, which occurs in the book of Joshua, has the potential to be as terrifying as this one, but there, the people do not turn away from the challenge. Instead, they are eager to enter the Land, no matter how difficult it might be. Perhaps their faith is stronger because they do not remember slavery, but perhaps it is stronger because they remember that God took care of even the smallest details when they were tiny and vulnerable.

This midrash in Shemot Rabbah doesn’t solve a problem in the text, or explain an ambiguity, as we tend to expect from this genre. Instead, it simply highlights God’s compassion, which is so great that it extends even to something so small. It is okay to focus on a detail in even the grandest of moments, it tells us. In fact, that detail might be the most formative part of the whole experience.

Human memory is fallible, and we often lose the memories that we had most wanted to keep. However, the tiny glimmers that remain have the potential to shape not only our views of the past, but also the way we look towards the future.

This commentary was originally published in 2020.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous
grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

But first, a little context: The Hebrews are having a VERY tough go of it. Led by Moses, they have fled Egypt with Pharaoh following close behind (until he wasn’t), and received a crash course on Matzah (Exod. 13:6), on Tefillin (Exod. 13:9), on being used as human bait (Exod 14:2–4), on sarcasm in service of effective complaining (Exod. 14:11), and on the satisfactions of a well-placed “I told you so” (Exod. 14:12). And then just as they are learning how it is that free people go about acquiring water and food, they are attacked by the famously murderous, scorched-earth inclined forces of Amalek.

And it is then we arrive at our moment.

Joshua did as Moses told him and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went to the top of the hill. Then whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses’s hands grew heavy, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur, one on each side, supported his hands; thus, his hands remained steady (vayehi yadav emunah) until the sun set. And Joshua overwhelmed the people of Amalek with the sword.

(Exod. 10–13).

Sounds like a pretty simple win-story for team Hebrews, doesn’t it? Yet, in a certain way, the Rabbis appear reluctant to let the choreography of this narrative speak for itself. Coming so soon after Moses raising his arm over the Sea of Reeds triggering its parting and then again raising his arm when the sea closes over the Egyptian army, the whole “when [Moses] raise(s) his hand and the Israelites prevail” thing in the conflict with Amalek appears to the Rabbis to be a bridge too far; Moses’s arm-raising proximity to three of God’s miracles in a row makes the Rabbis nervous.

What are they nervous about? Reading vayehi yadav emunah as “his hand was faith” instead of “his hands remained steady,” the Midrash speaks directly to their concerns:

 “Did Moses’s hands themselves strengthen Israel or break Amalek? No! Only, as long as he raised his hands toward Heaven, the Israelites would look at him and have faith” (Mekhilta on Exod. 17:11). The Rabbis wanted everyone to be very clear about the true source of the Israelites’ success.

In my role as the mental health coordinator of a Marcus Foundation grant to 91�첥’s Center for Pastoral Education, the parashah’s more covert conversation about identifying the source of any leader’s success in serving the extraordinary needs of their community resonates deeply. I have been privileged to converse with a broad swath of 91�첥 alumni—educators, chaplains, rabbis, hazzanim, and Jewish professionals, people I call “spiritual and emotional first responders,” about the extraordinary spike in emotional and spiritual needs of their constituents of the last few years and the incredible—and too often uncelebrated—lengths they have gone to ease their burden. I have left nearly every encounter wiser, humbled, and inspired. 

Sadly, I was also struck in these exchanges by the nearly unanimously expressed feelings of intense isolation in the face of the huge mental health needs of their constituents, as well as their own existential fatigue. These Jewish professionals are actual heroes, providing comfort when it feels there is none to be had, rising to every challenge all while engaged in the very same struggles in their own lives!

The question arises: How, as a community, can we support the caregivers as they support the careseekers? What would it look like to, like Aaron and Hur, help hold their arms high?  As a partial answer to that question, the Center for Pastoral Education will soon be launching two mental health/spiritual healing initiatives. The first will be a weekly series of “Healing Torah” sessions that will offer exposure to some of the deep sources of sacred healing from within our tradition. The participants will create a sacred (online) space to speak, share, listen, and be heard. The second initiative will be an in-person multi-day gathering this summer of caregivers/emotional and spiritual first responders to talk with each other, sharpen and expand their caregiving skills, listen to each other’s wisdom and experience, and lay the building blocks of a professional-personal support network that will play out long past the conference. 

An adjacent caregiving challenge this parashah raises is reflected in the phrase “Who heals the healer?” Or better, perhaps, “when does the healer ever focus on their own healing?” Before fighting with Amalek, the Israelites are trying to figure out where their next meal is coming from, offering another opportunity for sarcasm (Exod. 16:3). In response, as perhaps a Divine precursor to DoorDash, God famously rains down manna for the Israelites to eat, calling the nutritious precipitation a “test [for] them” (Exod. 16:4). The Rabbis wonder how God delivering food right to the Israelites’ (tent)step could be understood as a “test.” The commentator Nahmanides suggests that more than testing their obedience to God’s gathering instructions, perhaps the real test is of the Israelites’ capacity to rely on God’s care for them, to allow themselves to freely choose to accept God’s love and support (Ramban on Exod. 16:4).  I think Nahmanides captures something very important and paradoxical about human nature.  While we may excel in caring for, and even healing, others, in our own moments of crisis and need, we struggle to let others care for us.

Moses, Aaron, and Hur collectively remind us of the liberating and humbling truth that whatever part we may be privileged to play in someone else’s journey toward healing, our ability to serve others depends on our place in a larger sustaining system of renewal and replenishment. Moses knew he could not save the Israelites from Amalek alone and that to get that job done he needed God’s power. Despite whatever human ego- disappointment that knowledge may have triggered in Moses, he had the emunah, the steadiness and deep strength, to lean on—literally and figuratively—the love and support of Aaron and Hur.

There is in Moses’s actions a model and inspiration for all the caregivers among us: true healing cannot sustainably flow in only one direction. For caregivers to live a sustainable life of caregiving, whether in a professional or personal setting, we must be living an ever-renewing, emotionally and spiritually nourishing life. Put simply, what goes out must come in. Rinse and repeat. Why? I guess because, at the end of the day, everyone’s arms get tired.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

Both passages center on an apparent oxymoron: we (or God) should erase even the memory of the most terrible aggression against the Israelites, and at the same time we are also commanded to remember and to take action to ensure future communal remembrance. The desire to try to forget our worst experiences is understandable, perhaps even for God. Rashi explains that God shares this desire to forget: “The reason I admonish you thus [to remember] is because I want to blot [Amalek] out.” My father-in-law’s father, Henry, lost almost his whole family in the Holocaust. Like so many other survivors of trauma, he never spoke with his children about the family and friends he lost. Henry wanted his children to grow up in America free from the pain he had endured. As Rashi comments on yet another verse about violence in our Torah portion, “They have no choice but to move forward” (Exod. 14:15). 

In Parashat Beshallah, however, God insists that our community must remember what is at times too painful for the individual to bear. I was reminded of the redemptive power of remembering recently when my father-in-law received a message about his Uncle Mechel. My father in law had honored Mechel by naming his first child (my husband) in his memory, but he knew very little about Mechel. Henry and Mechel had lived together in Venlo, Holland, in the years before the war. Henry moved to Palestine in 1935, but Mechel stayed in Venlo, married and had a child and was killed in the Holocaust. It turns out that before he was deported, Mechel had left his hanukkiyah, along with photographs and papers, with a Dutch co-worker for safekeeping. After the co-worker’s death this year, her family discovered the items and wanted to return them to Mechel’s family. That they found us (via Ancestry.com) feels like a miracle. 

Even more miraculous, they put us in touch with Gerrit van der Vorst, a Dutch man who has devoted the last two decades to researching the Jews of Venlo during and after the Holocaust. He presented us with a well-researched presentation on Henry and Mechel.  He showed us pictures of and advertisements for the brothers’ store, notices of their marriages, and family photographs. He provided documentation of Mechel’s oppression: a Nazi ledger listing all of the family’s belongings (but not the hanukkiyah), another entry when Mechel and his wife were forced to surrender their bicycles, accounts of their arrests for the “crime” of being Jewish and their deportations and deaths in Auschwitz.

Gerrit could have succumbed to the urge to forget, like some Europeans who were born shortly after the Holocaust. His father had been a member of the local police force that was involved in the deportation of the Jews of Venlo. Instead, Gerrit continues to remember and to insist that his fellow citizens remember. He has written several books on the subject, including a chapter on Mechel and his family, and he contributes to the online effort to document the Jews of Holland. He helped organize ceremonies to lay memorial stones at victims’ homes, including Mechel and Henry‘s building where they lived and worked.

Gerrit also showed us the new Dutch Holocaust Memorial of Names. It was conceived in 2013, but construction didn’t start until 2019 due to protests from local residents who expressed concerns about traffic and security.^[1] Its walls are shaped to form the letters of the Hebrew word לזכר (in memory of). Each brick has the name of a Dutch victim of the Holocaust, but 1,000 bricks have been left empty in acknowledgment of the fact that so many victims’ names are currently unknown. Daniel Libeskind, architect of the memorial, hopes that this monument will promote further remembering: “We know there are more names. Because most of the families were exterminated, we don’t have all the names. Just in the process of building this, people will remember. It’s a way to make it contemporary, a way to make it living.”^[2] Mechel’s brick is not empty. After more than 70 years, we are able to fulfill the commandment to remember.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

^[1] https://www.dw.com/en/dutch-holocaust-memorial-opens-after-years-long-legal-deadlock/a-59231217

^[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/arts/design/holocaust-memorial-is-closer-to-reality-in-amsterdam.html?_r=0