By Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
The days of awe were created by our ancestors to help us repair brokeness, restore trust and implement forgiveness on an individual and collective level. Kippur means erase and expiate, release and transform through acts of purification.
But how do we expiate and erase collective wounds? What frame shall we use for the transformation of acts that have caused suffering and distress? How do we heal?
Our sages taught us, 'When we repent out of fear, the intentional acts of missing the mark is not considered complete. Full repentance, that is, healing transformation which changes transgression to acts of merit, occurs when we are transformed by love.' This observation was delivered by Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira in his book: Sacred Fire: Torah from the years of fury 1939-1942. This rebbe who lived through the Holocaust believed that in order to heal from the wounds of life, we must undergo transformation from the perspective of love and healing and not fear and threat of punishment. But how? How do we forgive those who have hurt us? How do we rediscover trust and love after genocide?
First we have to understand the impact of collective trauma and how it is impacting our life as a people. I owe a deep debt of gratitude in this reflection to the indigenous communities of North America who remain my teachers in many things. My conversations and explorations with teachers of indigenous wisdom have deepened my understanding of healing from historical trauma. In addition my work with Holocaust survivors, survivors of incest and torture have informed my understanding. I want to credit all those brave wise souls who turned their wounds into blessings. Although they never stopped acknowledging what happened, they refused to be defeated by fear. Instead, they turned toward regeneration and life. The knowledge that turns wounds into blessings holds the most profound spiritual wisdom embedded in the human species. If we are to create a world free of violence, we must turn away from fear driven behavior toward acts of renewal, alliance building and love.
The question of healing from historical trauma became crystalized in my mind when I started a program in Albuquerque to connect our youth to Holocaust survivors. I had the idea that we would not address the Shoah in these meetings, we would simply prepare a meal and offer our company. We would be a caring presence. This was met with deep appreciation. Many of them shared that they were tired of being seen as icons of death on Yom HaShoah forced to recount stories of suffering and then, left alone for the rest of the year. "No one remembers what happened before. All they see when they look at us is dead bodies. We are tired of telling our survival stories. Come on rabbi, they would say, tell us a story."
These feelings among survivors caused my Albuquerque community, Nahalat Shalom, to create The Anne Frank Cafe, an evening during the events of remembrance, that focused on the life before genocide. That is another reason we chose to learn Klezmer music and dancing. We cannot heal without healing our bodies. Dance and music are a way to re-embody our indigenous wisdom. By offering klezmer dance and music to survivors, they rediscovered a source of healing and joy. Rather than, never again, we chose to light a mourning candle and then to engage in cultural and spiritual renew. It was very well received by those who suffered the most loss. That is something to consider.
I want to look at healing from historical trauma because I believe when we do not have a healthy relationship to healing in regards to our collective trauma, we are vulnerable to destructive behavior. We can recognize our lack of healing by a certain constellation of elements. We over identify with the dead, experience despair in things improving, are more likely to come to depend on violence as a means of control, become loyal to the memory of suffering, see all conflict as threats of annihilation. When we assume this stance, we are vulnerable to micro-aggressions, making others invisible and absent, or romanticize and eroticize those we oppress, while appropriating their cultural knowledge, land and even their identity. Feelings of shame, dismissal and dislike of our own tradition coupled with a passive relationship to it, our sense of alienation and anger when Israel is criticized, our collective behavior toward Palestinians, our inability to evolve our tradition into new forms as well as our lack of knowledge of our own ceremonial and traditional indigenous wisdom, and the factionalism we often see in the Jewish community stem from unhealed trauma. We build monuments to our suffering. We ask our children to identify with a single holocaust child and relive their death. Perpetuating trauma to the next generation results in maintenance of a state of hyper-arousal, permanent alertness and vigilance that stems arising from a sense that danger may return at any moment. Every Israeli child is taken to the massacre grounds of Europe before they are initiated into the army. We see Arabs as Nazis, Ahmadinejad as Hitler, Richard Goldstone as a perpetuator of blood libel, Naomi Klein as a collaborator. We are paralyzed in our capacity to broach the subject of Israel all together because we are not healed. Unless we address healing of the trauma of European genocide, we are bound to relive old events by identifying them in new forms.
In Jewish language we call this, "Never again." As we turn our attention to healing, we have to recognize our trauma triggers a physiological response that impairs our capacity to heal. A traumatized brain cannot come into harmony. During trauma we actually loose access to certain physiological aspects of our self. When we are collectively triggered, conflict escalates and reason descends because we need our adrenaline to act in survival mode. In such a state we have no access to our cerebral cortex. Heart rate and breathing goes up. Our intelligence goes down. That is why our sages counseled healing from love and not fear. Fear paralyzes our ability to learn, grow and heal. And we need to heal. We certainly do not want to perpetuate fear. Fear reduces our empathy and allows us dehumanize others. This is not a good road.
So what is the healing road? First I want to acknowledge the amazing rebirth of ourselves as a people. We are here together, reborn and revived. Just that fact that we are together is the first step in self-pride, an essential element in healing the wound. Loving ourselves as a people is crucial to wholeness and regeneration. That is why we must continue to turn to our elders and cultural innovators as sources of revitalization. Trusting those who have knowledge and experience of cultural healing wisdom means valuing the future over the past. That is why we need to assume a proactive stance into repairing our own culture and the constructive of Jewish identity. Healing includes revival of cultural knowledge, reclamation of stories, language and indigenous Jewish wisdom. Healing also cannot take place without identification of destructive conduct, release from conflict and looking forward instead of backward. Rather than taking a judgmental stance, we must do these things from a place of love and empathy. Healing is an ethical act as well as an act of physical, emotional and intellectual restoration. When we are healed, we are less likely to harm ourselves or others.
In the end, by adopting a healing model, we acknowledge that this is a process that continues from generation to generation. The question for us at the DJC is how we can create a healing environment that both recognizes our collective destructive behaviors generated from trauma, addresses them with courage and love, and then uses the full range of our indigenous wisdom to create a future without violence. This will influence how we bring Jewish culture to life, how we feel about ourselves and others, and how we heal the wounds generated by the Israeli Palestinian conflict. May we draw upon love over fear so that complete healing comes quickly in our day, amen.
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